It Is time to let go of Social Media

I haven’t been on Social Media for days. No feelings of loss transpired.

I was born in 1982. This makes me a millennial. If you believe these completely arbitrary generation lines. I remember the early Internet. You know, the one with horrid, eye-cancer-inducing colors and cat pictures. I don’t want to go back there. And to my younger readers, you can trust me that you don’t want either. Like most people from my generation, I grew up with Social Media. I had accounts on almost all of them. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok.

I may even have had a MySpace account. I don’t recall. Like most others, I found SoMe captivating. I hopped on there all the time. Reading news from my feeds. Posting silly pictures. I joined groups for all sorts of purposes. It was great.

When I launched my blog and started writing, I thought that I needed to leverage my Social Media accounts to get more views. After all, that is what everybody says.
So I followed the advice.
For while, though I didn’t even bother to link my articles on any Social Media Platforms at all. Strangely enough, it has not affected my views and engagements on my articles at all.

Social Media Is Toxic

Also, I stopped engaging in actual discussions on SoMe platforms long ago. The debate culture is simply toxic. I rather write articles here. Where I have the time to churn my thoughts before hitting publish.

We are very afraid that our kids misbehave on these platforms. But whenever I follow discussions I notice a pattern. The nastiest, most toxic comments always seem to come from middle-aged white people. My generation.

So, I don’t miss going on Social Media. And my blogs don’t seem to miss it either. The only engagement I’ve had has been here on Medium.
It just appeals more to me, I guess.
I love reading well-researched and thought-out posts or political commentary and engaging about it.
It is a more meaningful engagement. Most writers actually think before they post. It shows. They still get something wrong from time to time. I do too. But with a few exceptions, the debate culture is vastly different than anything I have seen on any Social Media.

Perhaps it is time to let my profiles go for good.