How I'm weaning myself off social media

and why it became an issue in the first place

Hello, I’m Kathryn and I write about learning to live with chronic illness, navigating a career as a poet and writer as well as making poetry films.

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

If you’ve had chance to read my post Getting my act together, you’ll already know I’ve reached a point of reset in my career. I have many aspects to work on and one of the most immediate is to change my relationship with social media.

I realised towards the end of last year that social media was having a negative influence on my brain, specifically my attention span. I’ve never been a person who's chased “likes” or found myself seething with jealousy at Fifi’s news that she has a new sofa (I adore seeing folk’s happy holiday photos and joyful pets) but I am increasingly aware that at best I don’t enjoy the time I spend on social media and at worst my attention span has significantly decreased.

My moment of clarity came after reading a brilliant article by Tom Cox which summed up my feelings with aplomb.

Social media has long been a useful way for writers to reach readers but it’s also more dominantly a way for writers to reach people with attention spans like grated parmesan who are too psychically oppressed by social media to read books any more.

Why not just delete my account

The simplest thing would be to leave the various platforms. Unfortunately as a writer and a small business, I rely on social media to gather readers and customers. Algorithms and advertising are making this increasingly ineffective and I intend to find other avenues for publicity but for now, a social media presence is still necessary.

How I’m weaning myself off social media

My first step in weaning myself off social media was to think about why I use it.

As a person with M.E. the most challenging symptoms are poor stamina and brain fog. One of the techniques I use for day-to-day living is to schedule frequent breaks (this is a lot more annoying than it sounds). If I’m writing, or doing domestic tasks like cleaning, cooking, or gardening I set an alarm to give myself a ten-minute break every forty minutes. Typically, I’ll go and scroll through Facebook or Instagram, watching reels of dubious comedy value or scant public interest. More and more I’ve been using this as my primary form of relaxation.  Ten years ago, I’d have picked up a book or magazine.

What I gain from scrolling social media is a sense of escape, a sense of time out from my day. It’s a habit and habits can be shifted.

What I am using to replace social media

My second step has been to consider what to replace my scrolling with. If I’m physically tired and beset by porridge brain, then choosing a hefty intellectual book may not meet my need. This is expressed brilliantly by Roz Goddard in Poetry Projects to Make and Do

Currently my addiction to soft-boiled crime fiction is telling me I’m feeling overwhelmed in my life and need to carve out the time to enter the world of forensic archaeology, sand dunes and peril that isn’t my own.

Poetry Projects to Make and Do published by Nine Arches Press

My first major change was to stop reading books I felt would add gravitas to my online persona and return to reading books I enjoy. I feel a little embarrassed to write this– a little exposed – but honesty is the key to everything and if this article is to be of any value, I need to show how entrenched I had become in the creation of a curated life. The pressure to read books that impress, rather than books that bring joy is another consequence of the grip social media has on my inner as well as outer life.

Since I’ve made this decision I’ve enjoyed reading, laughed, cried, looked up new words, finished a book in a day, read another in tiny fragments because it moved me so much and flicked through a magazine with a lightness no stream of targeted ads could possibly deliver.

Create physical barriers

The third step was to think about the times when I don’t feel such a pressure to “check my phone.”

The answer (as it is to so many things) is when I'm gardening. My fear of dropping my phone (or flinging it into the compost bin where so many gardening gloves meet their doom) combined with a pair of slightly tricky to remove gardening shoes mean I rarely take my phone outside. Gardening is an activity that remains blissfully free of a social filter, apart from posting (too) many photos of flowers.

Having established that physical distance is a decent deterrent I’ve started leaving my phone upstairs when I’m not actively using it to post an ad for my business or respond to emails. Adding an extra action means an extra stage of thought (a bit like putting biscuits in a higher cupboard). I’ve also gone back to using recipe books, to avoid the five minutes scroll while the onions brown (or burn!). Instead, I sit out in the yard and listen, or look out of the window at everything I often fail to see. A mini meditation, with a backdrop of not letting the onions go too crispy.

Pay attention to how I feel

My final action is to pay attention to how I feel. I check in with myself after reading or a few minutes sitting and absorbing my surroundings and note any physical changes. The words I keep writing are “my breath feels more open.” This isn’t the best sentence in the world but what I think I mean is that I am more relaxed, my breathing is deeper – I am more peaceful. The words I write after spending extended time on social media are “my shoulders hurt” and “I feel tense.” I know which set of feelings I prefer.

Nothing new…

I’m very aware that none of these techniques are groundbreaking or particularly amazing. What is amazing is the impact I’ve felt after just a week. I am more inclined to read and more disciplined about the amount of time I spend on my phone. I also realise how much of my own life I’ve spent on this pocket-sized tyrant. Having a chronic illness like M.E. means I have limited energy so why the blazes have I chosen to slip into advertiser driven inertia? I’ve got around 20-30 good years left at best and I don’t want to spend any more of them in a state of passive consumption, hoping that someone, somewhere notices what I’ve posted online. I need to find better ways of making myself feel good, heard, and valuable.

In many ways, writing on Substack has potential to rekindle that sense of community I felt during the early days of social media. Having M.E. and living in a semi-rural environment means I’m pretty isolated. I’m also in possession of a personality that means small talk and chattering crowds leave me unnerved and hollow. I frequently say the wrong thing in the wrong place and have a knack for talking too seriously at parties. Substack offers small, focused communities that I feel brave enough to speak in. So far, I’ve encountered people like

Kathryn Vercillo

who are passionate about creativity and mental health, people like

Dave Bonta

who spend time reading and sharing fabulous array of poetry blogs and people like

lucy sweet

whose Lucyverse more than meets my need for satire, and laugh out loud weirdness. In short, I’ve encountered writers, artists and thinkers eager to share, learn and just enjoy being.

This seems to be a place I can talk about books and poetry, a place where I can read about things got that are going on in the world without the pile on of anger and self righteous opinion. I can read long form intelligent, amusing essays written for the joy of writing, rather than attention-grabbing soundbites. I’m weaning myself off the petrol dopamine hit, the sugar rush content and finding true nourishment. I feel I’m getting part of myself back.

Thank you so much for reading - I hope this has been useful, if only to make you feel glad you have a healthier relationship with social media than I do! In my next article I’ll be looking at how I’m trying to silence my “who’s going to listen to you” voice and assuming I manage to keep away from the temptation of life hack reels, I’ll have another poetry film ready for you to enjoy on Friday

Poetry Film

Until next time

Kathryn

xx