More and More People Are Giving up Social Media Everyday. Let’s Find Out the Reasons.
The Cambridge Analytical scandal; Mark Zuckerberg and Trump in secret meetings; or just being over personal best posts from Running apps, are all legitimate bad reasons to surrender the social media.
You might think the main reason people are leaving social media is privacy policy changes but honestly, it’s barely ever about Mark and his data mining empire. There are far more personal causes behind the mass migration from the public eye, and we’re delving into 15 Reasons Why people are giving up on social media.
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1
It’s an Unrealistic Expectation
Can you imagine coming home from school or the office and the only people you interact with are whoever lives with you? Idyllic, right?
But instead, we have this urgent need to keep up, catch up and stay on top of everyone’s “perfect” life. Then once you have scrolled through everyone’s perfect Thursday, you feel obliged to come up with something equally cutesy, funny, inspiring, or intelligent to post.
The expectations around “keeping up with the socials” can be exhausting, nerve wracking, and completely unrealistic. Many people are sick of this feeling and are leaving the scene for good.
2
We’ve Stopped Caring What the Joneses Ate for Breakfast
We’re all collectively tired of keeping up with the Joneses If it wasn’t for social media, you wouldn’t have kept up with 95% of these people’s lives, or been concerned if they moved jobs, had a birthday or a child. This doesn’t mean you wished anyone harm or felt anything untoward regarding their success. It just means that you are a human with a normal limited human-sized capacity.
With the capacity we do have, most of us would do better to spend it on relationships that are genuine and not superficial. Who cares what Janet in IT thinks of the service at the Dunkin down the road, or how many followers Trent from high school has? It doesn’t make us feel more loved or validated. Check in on your own brother instead, or chat to your neighbour over the wall for a few minutes.
3
It’s a Lot of Bad News, All the Time
Singer Lorde ditched the socials in April 2018 and hasn’t been back since. She wasn’t a frequent poster, but her final radio silence was a result of the effect of being bombarded with bad news non-stop, which played havoc on her mental health.
Most of us have enough sense to follow trustworthy sources and know what is happening in the world. We don’t need to be bombarded with non-stop devastation and destruction; it makes us feel powerless and paralysed instead of empowered.
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4
The Hate Is Real
Social media dehumanizes “the other,” so hate speech and verbal abuse is common. It polarises opinions when there are actually plenty of shades of grey to meet on in-between.
Social platforms also make it easy to bring the harshest insults, because your keyboard is all powerful when you don’t see someone’s facial expression as your words are delivered.
Author, Stephen H Provost summarised it on his blog by saying: “Dehumanization is the gateway drug of bullying, and groupthink is the “fix” that keeps abusers coming back for more.”
Meghan Markle knows this well. The former Duchess of Sussex told a 2019 Teenager Therapy podcast, “I’m told that in 2019 I was the most trolled person in the entire world, male or female.” Cyberbullying is a team sport, and at any sign of blood in the water its attack time.”
5
Social Media Has Lost Its Sense of Humour
It’s really hard to make a joke on social media without offending somebody. It’s not that we’re all about jokes at the expense of someone else, but social media seems to make any humour out of bounds.
In March this year Alec Baldwin tweeted his last tweet before departing. He made a comment on Gillian Anderson’s Golden Globe acceptance speech. So, did he diss her figure, or criticise her fashion sense, or make a pass at her? Nope the tweet was simply:
“Switching accents? That sounds… fascinating.”
Of course, it was sarcastic and pointed at the double standards because Anderson happily flits between her British and American accent based on context, whereas his wife Hilaria was shamed for changing between her Spanish and American accent.
Needless to say, it wasn’t well received so he exited the Twitterverse…
6
Personal Information Security
Although not one of the high-ranking reasons, hacking and identity theft does happen when you expose your personal details to social media networks. Emma Stone experienced this in 2012 when her Twitter account was hacked. This was reason enough for the LaLaLand star to deactivate her account on the platform.
7
Dodgy Past Post History /Reputational Damage
For digital natives with a long history online, it’s easy to hit a few snags along the way. Especially when your newsfeed is longer than your resume, and you might have a few undesirable moments archived on the gram!
This can cause loss of work opportunities by potential employers, or even current employers to fire you. Many things have changed from being socially acceptable into the mortal sin category since the dawn of Facebook, and all that evidence remains for anyone who keeps scrolling.
Many people choose to rather deactivate those accounts from their youth when they enter a serious career path, so that their public reputation isn’t damaged by stupid things they did or said in their youth.
8
To Take Back Their Time
Social media is really time consuming. Staying on top of the latest TikTok trend, keeping an eye on all your favourite influencers AND scrolling through endless pet pics, all takes time. Then you have to dress, pose and touch up your own posts and then type a great caption for them too.
Many people have realised that it’s time to slow their scroll, spend more time IRL and get over their screen addiction.
If you need help to disengage from social media, we’d suggest our Mind Mastery course.
For more information about it, head to alux.com/mindmastery and enroll now!
If you also want to stop wasting your time on social media, check out 15 Ways to Reduce SCREEN TIME.
9
Unsustainable Social Strain
Before social media, we weren’t obliged to wish Jason from high school a happy Birthday! Or coo at every newborn, engagement or bowl of muesli everyone you have known since birth has.
That takes energy.
Social media taps into our instinct for knowledge sharing, but this comes with a subconscious mutual obligation to engage. For example, if this person wished me happy birthday, I better acknowledge their engagement, and they liked my post, so I better heart their picture.
In real life we have these too, but these engagements are more manageable because there is a limited amount of them in a day. Being completely overwhelmed is driving people off social media.
10
It’s Just the End of the Journey as We Know It
This might be a natural progression, but one we haven’t had for long enough to recognise as a pattern yet. Perhaps just like doing colour runs and white picnics, the craze has just faded for social media.
Those leaving are perhaps the early adopters of a mass migration from social platforms. The social tensions combined with the rebelling against privacy policies, have just led to a general feeling of being “over it.” This isn’t a move to just abandon an online presence, but it’s perhaps a watershed moment of defining what the digital self will look like in the next stage of this evolution.
Aluxers, if you needed more validation why people are leaving social media – be sure to watch our video:
11
Tension between IRL and ORL, Are We More Connected or Less
While on paper, the idea of social media might seem to bring us closer to our community of people we know, the reality is a lot lonelier. For many having the opportunity of endless social connections and still feeling misunderstood, can lead to extreme loneliness. Perhaps it’s the realisation that it’s a false sense of community, that feeling of standing in the middle of a crowded dance floor and feeling completely alone.
Many people are opting to move away from the false sense of community and status that social media presents and opt to catch up with people you know in the grocery store aisle IRL instead of creeping through their Instagram feed to see what they have been up to.
12
It Makes Us Impatient IRL
Have you ever tried to tell a story to someone who is a real social media head? It’s like you can feel them trying to click you ahead. Social Media’s focus on fast, convenient and “bite sized” packages of information can make us impatient to anything explained in any substance or depth. More on this next.
At the same time, notifications are being muted or switched off, and a lot of viewers opt out of the auto play function.
13
We Crave Substance Compared to Oversimplified Information
Growing impatience leads to dismissing evidence over impactful and sensational opinion. To many, there is a need to have an opinion fleshed out in more than 140 characters so that ideas don’t come across oversimplified and polarising.
There is a growing return to more substantial investigative research sources and shying away from shallow or narrow points of view that don’t seem well researched.
14
It’s Too Distracting
Every bell icon, ping, and beep interrupts our thought stream or conversation. It keeps conversations superficial, drives up anxiety and reduces productivity as at any given moment, without invitation, someone can just drop into our reality.
We could be having a happy time with friends and seeing a post of your ex and new partner can ruin your whole day, no matter what fun you were having.
To escape this ,a lot of people are deleting the source of the problem, their numerous social media accounts and freeing themselves from the trap with a little old fashion ignorant bliss.
15
They’ve Identified the “Echo Chamber” and Want Out
The feeling of belonging on social media sites comes through carefully crafted algorithms that push us towards likeminded people with subtle or not subtle suggestions.
Great in theory, but by now most people are realising how dangerous this is. Hearing different opinions, or having things explained by various sources, helps to retain the humanity in the message. When all we hear is the situation from one side we dehumanise “the other” as discussed before.
What’s worse, if you hazard to share an alternative opinion, you will be shamed and cast out.
It is hard to find a way into a new circle, or even to a more moderate opinion. To ditch the chamber of echoes, droves of people are leaving it behind and logging out of their accounts, permanently.
Question:
What might make you leave social media?
