This is a recurring thought I’ve been having lately. I’m trying to abandon all social media, currently I use Twitter and mostly Instagram. I don’t think it will be a problem for me not using Twitter, but the thing is, how can I leave Instagram when most of my dating life depends on it?
I use it to interact with my friends and also to meet new people, friends of friends for example. I use Instagram DM a lot to talk mostly to girls. I’m not saying I can’t use another app to do that specifically, it’s just everything that Instagram provides (photos, stories, replies), the whole platform. I’m well aware of the consequences of the social network and that’s why I don’t want to use it anymore.
What you are experiencing are the network effect (all my friends are there) and FOMO (fear of missing out). There is a number of things you can do:
Continue using, as you get value from it. But maybe optimize your use (there are extensions, like demetricators, newsfeed replacements, for FB that hide attention-grabbing elements of the network. Didn’t find them for Instagram yet, though)
Convince your friends to use an alternative to Instagram (a hard thing to achieve probably)
Miss out, and maintain your network in a different way (phone, mail, message, visit, etc.)
I think the differences are I’m talking specifically about Instagram and dating. The solutions posted in the Facebook post don’t apply to me because I already don’t use it .
Sounds frustrating, but you will be able to do this- Take a break from dating for a month or two- people do this once in a while anyways- Then your friends your taking a break from Instagram- BUT before you do this sign up for some classes in something you’ve always wanted to do like music lessons or salsa dancing- join a professionals organization for the local opera or theater or symphony…
Make yourself really busy with these things and when you meet people don’t connect on instagram- give them your email or phone number- if they ask if you are on social media- say no been there done that;).
Invite your friends to your new activities and just tell them you need a break from electronic life- if they are real friends they will understand.
Lastly- if you are serious about this- share your concerns with a friend about Instagram etc… and why you have this idea of unplugging from social media- you’d be surprised how many people want to unplug. Social media is a tunneled experience that does not encourage free thought.
If you are serious about dating, then go on a proper dating website and find people to meet with. Also you may try MeetUp events and plan to see people face to face. You will never, ever, ever get the truth out of people messaging them on Instagram, you can’t see their eyes, you never know if they are telling truth and they are always complaining about how rubbish their lives are. Meet people in person not on Instagram. Harsh but true, then again I’m not in the dating game, I am happily married and met her through a dating website that I trusted and I agree you can’t trust many of them either.
I’m trying to be less on my phone and disabled all notifications except from my girlfriend and cleaned my home screen and so on.
But today in the morning I got my dopamin-kick right with a exclusive one hour session of instagram from people I even don’t know…
Social Media apps should help us to get more connected and for me it is right the opposite way of being more apart form real friends.
To answer the original question, “How can we leave social media?”
Restructure your life. Spend your time in interesting physical locations and if you desire to meet people meet them in person.
You mentioned direct messaging. Direct messaging isn’t social media, in fact it isn’t media at all. It’s just communication similar to the telegrams, phone, mail and text messages. You can quit all social media if you choose, and still message people without compromising your principles.
To save time, it’s often easier just to phone people as messaging is a waste of time and can lead to attention wasters like sending pics and web links, and dealing with the hassles of software. If you don’t want to message at a high frequency, you can use SMS (text messages) which work really well and are hassle-free.
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