It’s 10.44PM. I am sitting in my bed propped up for a good night’s sleep when I reach for the phone and immediately open Instagram. I browse my home screen and open the Cut’s latest post covering some type of fashion event. Without meaning to I begin to click on all of the tagged celebrities and end up diving deep into their feed. 30 minutes later I am still at it. I’ve checked up on all of the Kardashian sisters and am halfway through Kris’ Instagram when my thumb begins to cramp. I gaze up, it is multiple hours past my bedtime. I don’t know where the time went. But, to be even more honest, I don’t know why the time went.

We’ve all done it. We’ve all reached for the phone when the conversation’s gotten boring or started mindlessly scrolling while sitting on the can. Social media is a drug, and it is safe to say that most of us are addicts. I don’t know what your relationship is to your social media of choice is, but mine is a very complex one. I go from “I want nothing to do with this” to burying myself in other people’s lives in a matter of minutes. I used to not have any relationship with social media. For the longest time I wasn’t on Instagram and only checked Facebook for birthday updates from my laptop. Twitter never even reached me and Tik Tok hadn’t yet been invented. Nonetheless, I can’t remember those days anymore. While I wouldn’t necessarily call myself an addict, I do check social media in every free minute I have between tasks. Even as I write this, I break my golden rule of “no distractions”, to see if anyone has answered in the group chat.  It is a hard habit to ditch. But should we be ditching it?

My best friend has been off Instagram for months. Overwhelmed by the noise, the ads, the clickables, she decided to just shut it down and go cold turkey. It has been liberating for her. “I sometimes feel alienated, but the pros far outweigh the cons.” Another friend of mine remarked that if she’s on the toilet and doesn’t have internet that it “ruins the experience for her”. It’s interesting to see the range of experience that people can have with the digital world. Personally, I don’t know where I stand between these extremes. I see the importance of social media in staying up to date with the world. Many news pieces only reach me through memes, and there are certain long-distance friendships that only stay up to date because we comment on each other’s stories. But then there’s the scrolling. The mind-numbing instant gratification that comes with being semi-plugged into other people’s lives. There’s the comparing and envy that is singular to being bombarded with someone’s personal feed. I want to say that social media makes me a worse person, but I don’t know if that is the whole truth.

When I was sick and anxious, I couldn’t stomach looking at my phone. Every image felt like an attack on my eyes, and I found myself retreating from all forms of media just to stay sane. This was the longest period of my life where I was able to just focus on myself. I didn’t even respond to Whatsapp messages, I was that sequestered. I can’t say that I learned a lot from this unplanned digital detox. I would like to be all enlightened and proclaim how taking a break from social media cleansed my soul and made me see the things that truly matter, but that is not the case. Yes, not looking at my phone every few minutes gave me the space to dig deeper, to not be distracted, to truly connect, but I also missed out on a lot of interactions that come with being hooked into the digital world. There were people reaching out to me whose messages I ignored because I couldn’t take the stream of pings on my phone.

That being said, I am never pro social media. I think staying in the loop is draining and seems to fulfill a kind of self-centered “look at me” purpose. I have often asked myself why we even post on social media. What kind of importance do we attribute to ourselves and our experiences that we think other people must want to see this? What does it mean or matter that someone “likes” our posts? In that same vein I think it is supremely weird that I can be sitting in my home but know what my friend’s cousin’s wife had for breakfast in Canada. Social media makes it seem like there is no barrier between us and the other. We are immediately transported in someone’s private life, giving us the impression that we are much closer to them than we are.

Then again, there are those who use social media for “good”. Social media is a tool and the truth is that it depends how you use it. You can cover environmental campaigns and human rights atrocities or you can share videos of yourself chugging champagne on a boat in the Italian Riviera. It’s up to you what you want to draw attention to. Personally, I follow some enlightening and magnificent accounts on Instagram. When I open my feed I get a daily look into the marine world and the latest pictures of modern art works. I don’t know that my life would be better if I wasn’t able to see photos of all the monuments and natural sights that this world has to offer or read the occasional interesting article shared on Facebook. So maybe it is about how you curate your social media. Unfollow enough people and you might have yourself the correct amount of clued in.

But is there a way around social media in today’s world? Can we even be off it?

Now that I am “on Instagram” for professional reasons I find myself struggling a lot with questions I’ve never had to before. Is this post interesting? Does the format fit the message? Am I engaging people enough? Is there any way to make it more creative? Social media has become a headache I never thought I’d have to deal with and yet I can’t seem to get around the need to use it to send the message I’d like to send. The truth is, that if you want to create any kind of impact in today’s world, the easiest way to do it is digitally. I spend multiple days a month planning my posts, finding the medium that fits and trying to brainstorm captions. It is harrowing work and I find myself looking up to people that manage to make it appear effortless. I know I’m not supposed to address it directly—because it kind of takes the magic away—but being on social media is really hard. It is hard to find that special balance of real and honest in a world where you’re bombarded with alternatives.

I still frequently ask myself if there isn’t another way to achieve the same result that one would by being plugged into the world wide web. If we can send our messages without having to learn to do reels and how to boost our posts. If we can stay up to date without having to take in 100 impressions a day. Is there any way to make social media more real? If I could I don’t know that I would champion a world without social media. The nature-loving introvert in me would gleefully shout a “hell yes!”, but the human connection loving side of me would digress. All I can say about social media is it exists. It is a tool. Whether or not you use it and how often or not you use it is up to you.

What do you think?

Do you, too, suffer from the scrolling sickness?

Is there hope for a more honest and real movement in social media?

Connectedly and disconnectedly yours,

Girl With One Earring