Lost in the Social Media Sea

2012 was the year of mirror selfies and the infamous “duck face.” It was also the year I created my Instagram account. I was twelve years old, and my profile definitely reflected my age. I instantly spammed it with fun pictures from my camera roll and followed everyone I could think of. I loved playing with the filters, taking new pictures, and sharing moments with my friends. For me, it seemed to be a fun new freedom, as my mother hadn’t allowed me to have any social media before that. Little did I know that it would soon become one of my biggest insecurities.

Four days and twenty pictures into my account, I received a text message from a passive aggressive friend, warning me to “stop posting so much” and “have more followers than you’re following.” I was humiliated, feeling as if I had broken some unspoken rules. I deleted the app.

My eighth grade year, “tumblr girls” overtook the internet. I could see the patterns in the trend, and I didn’t think it’d be too hard to recreate. Deciding to try again, I redownloaded the Instagram app since it was a platform I was familiar with. A friend and I made a “tumblr girl” Instagram account, half expecting only our friends to follow. We’ll call her Emily. That was true at first, but after a few months, we had complete strangers liking our photos. I was introduced to concepts like hashtags and “shoutout for shoutout.” Exactly a year after we posted our first picture, we had 4,000 followers.

However once we hit 10,000 followers, Emily and I started to disagree about our posts. My pictures always seemed to be the issue. She complained that they were low quality photos, and my camera didn’t focus enough to replicate other popular accounts. We weren’t making any money from the account so I didn’t want to buy an entirely new camera. She changed the password on me and ran the account by herself.

I had gone from getting thousands of likes to having none at all. I felt devalued, like my social media presence wasn’t valid anymore.

I was fourteen when I made my Facebook account. I had thirty-two friends and cried because only two people liked my profile picture.

I was sixteen when I made a Twitter. I used a “pen name” of sorts and told no one that it existed.

I attend a university that largely values greek life. A girl who lived in my dorm freshman year told me that if I needed at least a thousand Instagram followers if I wanted a bid from a top sorority. “It’s okay,” she comforted me as I stared meekly at my screen. I only had a few hundred. “Just follow and unfollow. Or buy them from an app.” Needless to say, I didn’t rush that year.

Last month, I did the unthinkable for a Gen Z; I deleted my social media. All of it. My Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Youtube.

While I felt disconnected the first week, I adjusted quickly. I no longer feel the need to constantly check my phone, spending all day scrolling mindlessly through the lives of those I barely know. This might be preached again and again, but social media is not defining of a person. I feel just as free deleting my accounts as I did first making them. Likes and follows are just arbitrary measures without any real media.

That being said, social media doesn’t have to be harmful if used correctly. It can be a space to showcase creativity or share your life with closed ones. It can help careers take off if used properly. But you need to have a sense of who you are without it. As someone who grew up on the internet, I wasn’t able to differentiate that. I might return later on, but for the time being, I am happy taking a break.