I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I don’t love social media.
This isn’t a new revelation, and I’m certainly not the only person who thinks this. But, most people who don’t like social media tend to be older than me, and definitely don’t have multiple accounts on social media, like I do. Twitter, Instagram, unfortunately, Facebook, you name it, I probably have an account.
My dislike for social media doesn’t seem like it makes sense, but my issue with social media isn’t that people are cruel, or because people spend too much time on it. Today, many jobs do require some sort of media presence, and that is not an issue.
Social media platforms give me too much room to overshare. I was just beginning to grow up when all this social media stuff started to become a big deal. Embarrassingly, I created my Facebook account when I was 9 years old. Facebook was originally made for sad, lonely, pathetic college kids (aka. me now) who had nothing better to do.
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Obviously, at 9 years old, I wasn’t sharing anything special, other than begging people to help me out on FarmVille, so it wasn’t a big deal. I’m talking about later on and even now. It’s so easy to share my location and let everyone that follows my accounts know exactly how I’m feeling. In short, I can barely have any privacy because of this need to post every single one of my thoughts on social media, and I feel like I’ve desensitized some of the things other people post as well. Then there’s also this idea that people should be honest on social media and not just share the best parts of their life. So, how do I do that without oversharing?
Today’s solution? Create a backup, private account. The most common one people use are “finstas,” or fake Instagrams. You can have your main Instagram account as private, sure, but a finsta is exclusively for your closest friends. Finstas are basically a place where you post your drunk videos, photos of yourself crying and remind everyone of how broke you are.
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Social media easily became my diary. Most of my finsta consists of me crying or complaining about something. From me hating my Statistics class my senior year of high school to cryptic posts about being sad and contemplating who I am. I slowed down the posts in October when I almost posted in detail the mental breakdown I had, or as I like to call it “The Day College Became Thanos and Snapped My Brain.”
After I shared everything, I stopped, because it began to feel weird and oddly invasive. The only people that follow that account are people that I’ve known for a decent amount of time, but they don’t need to know every single thing that goes on in my life. For me, it has become so easy for me to just casually post something on that account right after something bad happened, and I don’t even have time to process it.
Sometimes when I’m scrolling through my feed, it feels like people are competing to see who has it worse, and I don’t want to be a part of that competition. I don’t mind people who choose to overshare on social media, if that is in someone’s comfort, that’s fine. I certainly won’t stop anytime soon, but if I can limit the oversharing, then it begins with saying goodbye to my finsta.