over the last several years, i’ve asked a lot of people why they use social media.  

responses are usually one of three things:  people want to stay connected to friends and family who live far away.  it’s for a business or brand they’re building.  or, they say something akin to ‘i want to know what’s going on’.  

this last sentiment, though expressed in many different ways, is very basically the fear of missing out, or ‘fomo’, as i’m sure you’ve heard it called.  because i receive this answer so often, i started responding with another question:  ‘what are you afraid you’re missing when you’re not on socials?’

most of the time, blank stares follow.  

i think the reason people don’t know what they’re afraid of missing is that they aren’t sure what value socials are really offering them. 

what is really missed if we spend a few days off socials?  or a few weeks, or a few months, or an entire year?  

if we added the time spent planning, recording, editing, and posting our own content, and then added in the time spent consuming others’ content, we will find an egregious time deposit going into socials every day.  

so let me posit a more relevant question. 

what are you missing while you’re on socials? 

i wonder if the greater loss is not what’s missed while we’re off socials (the friend’s life update, what someone wore, the reactions to a viral meme, or if the cat can tie the shoe or not).  

i wonder if the greater loss – the much greater loss – is what we miss while we’re on socials. 

i wonder if our fomo is incorrectly placed. 

what of the missed time with parents; siblings; friends; family; the neighbor; our children.  what of missing what we were made to do because we spent our time consuming instead of creating?  what of neglecting purpose, missing opportunities to change our corners of the world, or missing the beauty of the life we’ve been given?  

what if what we should be noticing is the disappearing sand in the hourglass while we let tiktok roll on and on? 

not one of us can escape the inevitable end of our days, and i can’t help but think that at the end of these generations’ lives people will look back and say, ‘why did i spend so much time on youtube?’; ‘why did i care so much about my insta followers?’; ‘why did i waste so much time on snap?’. 

i shared at the beginning of this that my goal was not to convert you to my way, but instead share the freedom i experience in life without social media.  and in this space, in the space of the ‘fomo’, i have deep freedom. 

while i watch people sit at restaurants with their faces in their phones, or watch people take and retake photos and then scramble to post them, or while i watch people stop at red lights and take out their phones to check their stories, i don’t experience ‘fomo’. 

i don’t think it’s me who’s missing out. 

life out from behind the screen is beautiful and brutal and ever-changing, and i love it here. 

is life out from behind the screen the right thing for you?  only you can answer that.  it’s not mine to tell you one way or the other, but it is mine to share the freedom i experience in living without it, and freedom it is.  

this is life without social media. 

this is life. Unchained. 

love, Nic