I have been engaged in some form of social media since 2005 when MySpace was still a thing. Does anyone remember MySpace? The thing I missed the most about it was the ability to customize your profile page and add a song to it. Then, of course, around 2008, Facebook came into view for me and, at first, I wasn’t a huge fan. Over time, however, that’s where everyone else was at, and I wanted to be a part of the conversation too. For the most part, it was a fun way to stay in touch with people and connect with them a bit over funny pictures and life moments. Over time, it devolved into an endless pit of useless information and angry shouting through keyboards and iPhones.

The Dangers of Social Media
No doubt, social media has its benefits, but it also has its dangers. Maybe near the top of the list is its ability to hook you into endless (also mindless) scrolling. I found that whenever I was bored, standing in line, wanting to disconnect from reality, or even just sitting with my family, I was scrolling through my feed. Honestly, most of the time, I didn’t really intentionally choose to be on there, it was just my default reaction whenever I had the chance.

Social media also has a way of forcing you to have an opinion about everything that’s happening in the world before you’ve had a chance to process the events and think through them biblically. I found myself defaulting to opinions that I didn’t really hold myself, but everybody on my news feed did and that’s what I was filling my brain with.

I often would use the excuse that I just “needed to let my mind wander for a minute after a long day.” But the truth is, I was engaging with social media on my phone at very unhealthy levels. It was distracting me from family, work, friends, and healthy rest. These honestly are only a few of the dangers, but they are the ones that were most problematic for me.

Why I quit
In January of this year, I made a decision to completely quit social media in every form for at least one month. I needed a hard reset and I knew that the only way to do that was to delete all the apps and block the websites from my phone and computer. I was tired of the endless scrolling and the ways it was impacting my mental and spiritual health. I was ready to quit it forever, but I wanted to give it some time before coming to that conclusion.

Jordan Raynor, the author of “Redeeming Your Time” has a great perspective on social media and he asks a very important question I think we should all consider:

That’s the question I really began asking myself and it’s the question that led me to almost entirely get rid of social media. For me, it was costing me family time, deep work, and mental energy I wanted to use elsewhere.

What I’ve missed since being off
Honestly… I haven’t really missed anything. I still know what’s going on in the world and in the lives of the people that matter most to me. I guess I had forgotten that my phone could be used for direct communication with these people and I didn’t have to find out about their child being born from Facebook. Okay, okay, truthfully, I’ve missed the memes a little bit. Who doesn’t enjoy a good meme? But even memes get sent to me from friends at times, so I’m not really missing that. And I’d much rather be with my family, or reading a good book than reading countless mindless jokes that add little value to my life.

How I’m currently engaging with social media
Currently, I log on about once or twice per week for no more than 5 minutes just to see if there’s anything interesting, but I very quickly get bored of it and log off. I haven’t posted anything on there (that I can remember) since the beginning of the year. Although, ironically I may post this blog post on there for those wondering what happened to me (the truth is that probably nobody is wondering that).

I do have plans to slowly work my way into posting things that I believe are valuable again at some point and engaging with comments once per week, but for now, I’m really enjoying the hiatus and I’m making no promises to myself to get back on.

I still watch TV and YouTube videos and have found other ways to consume entertainment, but those things have never been an endless rabbit hole for me like social media was.

What about you?
Have you seriously considered your level of engagement with social media and how it affects you? Maybe you’ve always made excuses or couldn’t imagine the thought of being off of it for an extended period of time. Let me be clear, I am not in any way saying everyone should do what I’m doing, nor do I think it makes me more holy or anything like that. It was just something that had obviously become a problem in my life and I needed to address it. I hope that sharing a bit of my journey with it would encourage you to think deeply about this as well.

I always thought I would regret not being part of the conversation and memes, but it has truly been one of the most refreshing decisions I’ve ever made. Don’t let FOMO (fear of missing out) hold you back from getting rid of something that is potentially harming your relationship with Christ, your family, your job, or anything else that has more value than that little app on your phone. Let me close with wise words from the apostle Paul: