Conviction

Eventually there will be a point in your life where enough will be enough. A time when things that may have seemed important is no longer a priority but rather a hinder. After my boys became ill, my time became increasingly more focused on them. My youngest requires alot more attention and help with his diabetes, while his older brother currently has sports and after school activities.

Having the same 24 hours as everyone else, I needed to cut some time out of my life and make more room for these new changes. The first step was to get off of social media. When I first joined Facebook back in the early days of it getting started, I primarily used it to keep my family and friends updated and to see how they were all doing. After my wife and I had kids it was a great platform to share pictures of our growing boys.

But all of that seemed to have changed over the years. It has become more of a distraction than anything. My timeline that was once filled with pleasant photos of family and friends, became filled with false and misleading information. The stuff being shared is never fact checked. I was doing that myself, after already having mistrust in social media with the way they handle our data, private information, pictures, content, etc.

We live in a society now that gets information and alerts almost in real time. Growing up in the 80's and 90's, we had to rely on the newspaper delivered to the front door the next morning. By that time everything in it was considered history by then. Personally I'm someone who perfers to read newspapers and get information from direct and authentic sources. Same for knowledge and entertainment.

Last year, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri mentioned here that Instagram is no longer a photo sharing website but rather a video site focusing more on reels. Now this might be subjective to some, but I find the algorithm used for reels to be off.. For example, I am not too fond of cats, but if I stopped at a reel featuring a kitten for a certain amount of seconds, Instagram thinks that interaction is positive and believes I want to see more kittens, which is not the case. Often it's an overload, scrolling down the feed where just about every other reel is a kitten.. This cannot be turned off. There is currently no way to disable reels.

I like the movement towards "digital responsibility" where we master our technology rather than have it master us. I've been away from social media for almost a month now and I feel great. I feel like I have a strong sense of conviction. I don't need validation from the world. In a sense, I'm free. When I go out or on vacation, I am not tied to my phone or feel the need to post pictures or comments on social media like “here look how much better my life is than yours.” I'm just not that kind of person. Sadly so many people are glued to their phone that they actually miss the point of truly enjoying themselves when they go out.

I’m not trying to convince anyone they should leave social media and your life will be perfect afterwards. I'm just stating that as of right now it doesn't work for me. I don’t see the value. I still have an IG though but I don't know for how long or if i’ll ever go back. Until then, stay tuned.