- Suzanne Bearne
- Business Technology Journalist,ygdsrfgtjhuye
Photo credit, Iain Macdonald
Gayle Macdonald says she now realizes there’s “more to life” than posting on social media.
When Gayle Macdonald peaked in Spain’s Sierra Nevada earlier this year, she didn’t just enjoy the moment.
The 45-year-old also did what a lot of people would do: she searched for the best place to take a selfie for her social media accounts. Gayle even admits she got dangerously close to the edge while doing it.
It was after this moment, for which she was scolded by her husband, that she decided to quit social media.
“I said to myself this had to stop,” recalls Gayle, a British expat living near the Spanish city of Granada. “Taking a photo is the first thing I thought of when I got out of the car.”
“Thinking about creating content all the time and worrying about what to say took up too much mental space and made me feel depressed,” she added.
A week later, she posted on Facebook and Instagram that she was going to quit the platforms. “It was amazing to see this was my most liked post on Instagram. Everyone was like ‘I wish I could do that’ and ‘you’re so brave’.”
Gayle, who works as a life coach specializing in helping people want to stop drinking, found that she spends an average of 11 hours a week on social media.
She says she found the idea of shutting down apps much scarier than actually shutting down.
Photo credit, Getty Images
Facebook had to report a drop in the number of active users.
“Once the initial abstinence passed, I had no more cravings,” she says. “It was quite liberating. I’ve now been sober for over six months on social media and have regained some of that sense of freedom and peace that I experienced when I quit alcohol.”
An addiction
Many of us spend a lot of our time on social media. According to a global study conducted in July, the average person spends two hours and 29 minutes a day on these apps and websites. That’s five minutes longer than a year ago.
While some think it’s a bad habit they should get rid of, for others it’s a real addiction and they need help to overcome it.
UK Addiction Treatment (UKAT), an organization that runs centers in the UK to treat social media addiction, says it has seen a 5% increase in the number of people seeking help for the problem over the last three years.
“Society has undoubtedly developed a heavy reliance on social media and the internet in general since the pandemic,” says Nuno Albuquerque, UKAT adviser.
Awareness of these issues has led more people like Gayle to abandon social media, or at least spend less time there. And suppliers are taking notice.
Photo credit, Getty Images
There are those who advertise everything they do on the networks.
Earlier this year, Facebook owner Meta reported that the number of daily active users had fallen for the first time in its history. Meanwhile, an internal Twitter report, leaked last month, said the then most active users were now tweeting less. Twitter did not deny the accuracy of the leak.
Even Twitter’s new owner, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, speculated earlier this year that “Twitter is dying.” In recent days, his takeover of the social network has caused some Hollywood celebrities to announce they will be leaving the platform, unhappy with Musk’s views on free speech and his plans for the service.
Books, not networks
But back to the real world. What are some other reasons people leave social media?
Entrepreneur Urvashi Agarwal previously quit Instagram in 2014, but it only lasted about a year. In August this year, she deleted her personal account for the second time and is confident there will be no going back this time around.
“It’s definitely over for me,” says the founder of British tea bag brand JP’s Originals, who lives in London.
Photo credit, Urvashi Agarwal
Urvashi Agarwal is determined to quit Instagram for good.
“100%. Not only is it a waste of time, but there seems to be less and less privacy in the world. Everything you do is constantly outside.”
Urvashi no longer uses Twitter or Facebook, and finds it liberating. “I love it. I now read 15 pages of a book every night.”
Awareness of wasted time
Hilda Burke, psychotherapist and author of The Phone Addiction Workbook, says awareness of the time people are “wasting” on social media platforms is now more widespread.
“This phenomenon is now easily quantifiable, because most phones show you the breakdown of the time you spend online,” she explains.
“Seeing how it all adds up can serve as a powerful wake-up call. Many of my clients have expressed a correlation between heavy social media use and lack of sleep and increased anxiety.”
She advises people who leave social networks to tell all their friends about it, so that they no longer try to contact them through the sites. “Offer other ways to get in touch…maybe an old-fashioned phone call would be better for the relationship in the absence of direct messages.”
Kashmir, who declined to give her surname, is a 27-year-old public relations executive from Rochester, Kent, UK. She left Instagram 10 months ago, and had previously also moved away from Snapchat.
“The main motive was my mental health,” she says. “There’s a lot of pressure to conform to what other people are doing, which isn’t really representative or the reality of that person.”
Kashmir says his mental health has improved since quitting social media.
“At night I would stare at my phone, then I would sleep poorly and wake up feeling unrested. Now I don’t make comparisons in my daily life, and I don’t really know what celebrities do.
“(Being off the net) allows me to be more present, more assertive and more engaged in the decisions I make rather than being influenced.”
Kashmir adds that not being on Instagram and Snapchat doesn’t affect her PR work, and that she still uses LinkedIn if she ever looks for a new job.
“Life is more than a network.”
Nuno Albuquerque from UKAT explains that social media can be addictive for many reasons, the main one being that it is a form of escape, especially for the younger generation.
“But addiction feeds on isolation, and if someone spends more time living online than they do now, they will naturally isolate themselves and it can become an addiction.
Photo credit, Getty Images
How many selfies per week do you post on social media?
He welcomes the fact that more and more people are abandoning social media. “It is likely that we will eventually realize the damage this can do to our relationships, our mental health and our experience of real-world moments.
Meanwhile, in Spain, Gayle Macdonald says she’s happier without social media. “It’s so liberating to sit down and have a cup of tea without worrying about the image, the caption and whether it should be a story, a reel or a post. There really is more than that in life.