As a writer, I never thought of writers as business owners. However, in the age of technology, I quickly learned if I wanted to write for a living I need to behave like a business owner.
If I wanted to be a working writer, I need to stay relevant, stay engaged, and put my entire focus on my work. But being a mom, wife, and working lady, trying to juggle it all seemed chaotic.
I was working my day job, caring for my family, and doing all my daily tasks but realized that I was frantic with posting on social media. I kept trying to plan accordingly and kept asking myself:
Do I really have to post daily?
What are the correct times to post?
What are the right things to post?
How many platforms do I have to use consistently?
Social media became another job to add to my other job lists, and I was overwhelmed. In a state of burnout, I decided to take a break and put my phone away.
I thought to myself that taking time away from social media would help me clear my mind and once I did that, I started to feel like myself again. I felt calmer and at ease with the way life was going.
Marketing techniques and rules require constant posts regardless of whether the content you put out is good or not. Just as long as you keep posting things at a rapid pace to make sure you stick out from the crowd.
During my social media detox, I realized I couldn’t do that.
I cannot write content that isn’t well thought out and edited. I can’t create work that doesn’t help people. I can’t write articles that have no meaning for the sake of the number of views.
While coming to this realization, I also knew that this may backfire on my work. I knew this behavior was self-defeating and on the path to starving artist mode, but my mental health mattered more. After I spent days not scrolling through the apps, I realized something.
Emails from the apps like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, were crowding my inbox all reporting about the things I’d missed and if I wanted to turn on my notifications. The longer I was away, the more those emails popped up.
Suddenly it dawned on me that these apps were intentionally trying to get me back on. I realized when you stop using social media, the companies know and it scares them.
Why? Because social media apps need you to survive, not the other way around.
We have been brainwashed to think that constantly posting our lives through social media is necessary. The opportunity of being famous overnight or gaining tons of money through social media is at an all-time high and everyone wants a piece of the pie.
We could say that these companies are entirely to blame for their tempting marketing techniques and addictive ways but in reality, they were only able to get to this level of social media frenzy because of us: the users.
As a society, posting on social media now seems like a necessity to fit in because we unknowingly put a such high value on posting. We’ve slowly become addicted to it. Research shows the addictive patterns of using social media and how they can create changes in the physiological behavior of individuals’ brains and nervous systems.
Social media has even overtaken phones in how we connect and communicate with friends and loved ones. We forget birthdays because the apps will remember them for us.
It is up to us, the user, to have the awareness of knowing when to put the phone down and give social media a time out.
Social media breaks are a sign of rebellion.
It’s a statement that you are willing to shut out the noise so that you can listen to yourself again. It’s a way of checking out so that you can tune in to yourself, which is the ultimate gift of all: knowing who you are.
Social media is a tool and nothing more. Without YOU, the user, the apps would not exist. You have the power. You can determine whether you want to partake in these social media apps or if you just need time off.
The apps need you, not the other way around. Whenever you forget that, take that as a sign for you to take a break from scrolling and look up from the screen. There’s a great wide world out there that is filled with excitement and is entirely screenless.
Give it a try, you’d be surprised what you rediscover.
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Til next time,
