Done and Dusted

I have finally broken free from all social media, and it feels…AMAZING.

My Instagram accounts (I had two) were permanently deleted yesterday after being scheduled for deletion for thirty days. I left Facebook over a year ago.

I remember my first invitation to be someone’s ‘Friend’ on this thing called Facebook, and wondering what on Earth they were inviting me to. I think my first child was an infant or a toddler, and our second child hadn’t come along yet.  But it felt good to be invited, so I joined up, never imagining what the platform would eventually become. 

In time, I started to use Facebook more for self-promotion of my writing business, but I always had a love-hate relationship with it. Sure, it was cool to ‘meet’ people and gather a large number of ‘friends’, but I recognized, even then, how much of a time sucker it was and that it wasn’t actually…real? You know, you could make a ‘Friend’ on Facebook, but were they actually your friend? Or were they also caught up in some misguided social experiment that existed in the ether of computer chips and laptop screens?

I get why social media took off in the way that it did. And I do understand what folks get out of it, having been involved for so long myself. My daughter is about to turn 22, so I’ve been on and off Facebook, and then on and off Instagram, for a long, long time. The first time I deleted my Facebook account was when I decided that having photos of my family (not a huge number, but they were there) on an account that now largely promoted my erotic books, made me uncomfortable. Having personal photos at all on such a widely used platform made me nervous. And going through my account to delete them individually was too monumental a task. So I deleted my account and started fresh with a commitment to avoid posting personal photos unless they were my own headshots. I deleted it again when I decided to rebrand myself as AE Lister (rather than Elizabeth Lister). 

I finally got rid of Facebook permanently a couple of years ago, deciding to focus on Instagram instead. I even created a second Instagram account to indulge my obsession with actor Sam Reid and his portrayal of Lestat de Lioncourt in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat, and it was alot of fun. But curating those accounts took time out of my day and, more importantly, kept my attention focused on how many followers I had, how many likes a post had, how many shares etc.

More importantly, with the influx of generative artificial intelligence, I was becoming aware of the damage that Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and the other billionaire tech bros were doing, and had always done, to enrich their private coffers. 

I read the book Careless People, A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams, and fully realized what a disgusting, horrible person Mark Zuckerberg truly is. He literally makes my skin crawl. 

Seeing all of these creepy billionaire tech bros at Trump’s inauguration had a visceral effect on me, as well.

I had never really gotten into using Twitter very much, but as soon as Elon Musk took it over, I deleted my account. I didn’t want to be involved in anything connected with that person.

Perhaps, if Instagram wasn’t now a part of Meta, I might not have made the decision to leave. 

Instagram had a lot of positive content on it that I curated into my feed. I followed horse ranches and tourism accounts for places I wanted to visit. I followed actors that I liked and personalities that I found compelling. Much better than Facebook, for sure, because there was no assumption that any of these people/accounts were my ‘friends’.

Still, this content that I was seeing was distracting me from real life and the current moment. Also, my Instagram feed had become a slew of advertisements and sponsored content, which was what led me to break away from Facebook. I resented having to wonder if things I was seeing were AI generated or real, a task becoming more and more difficult. The questionable value these platforms had possibly provided to me and to my life, was deteriorating before my very eyes. 

But the deciding factor was the discovery of a deposition from a social media trial about underage users, where evidence was brought forward indicating that these companies weren’t simply negligent with regard to keeping young users off their platforms, hooking young users (and everyone) was intrinsic to their business model.

"Bobby Allyn:
Yes, so Zuckerberg took the witness stand.
And you could tell he was getting kind of testy. He often responded by saying things like, "I think you're mischaracterizing me," or "That's not what I said at all," or "I think you're taking this document out of context."
Zuckerberg was trying vociferously to demonstrate that the lawyers in the case were basically trying to lawyer him, right, to try to catch him in a gotcha moment.
But, meanwhile, what the plaintiff's lawyers were really focused on was trying to really illustrate that Zuckerberg himself was interested in recruiting and retaining children as young as 11 years old to Facebook and Instagram and keeping them on the platform for as long as possible with all of these very sticky features like likes and push notifications and beauty filters, was something that Zuckerberg himself ordered.”
 
~ PBS News, Ali Rogin, Jackson Hudgins

Here’s an article about the landmark verdict in the case.

I realized that we had all been hooked. The platforms are deliberately addictive. And I should have understood that a business created from a socially stunted man's idea of rating female classmates at college in terms of attractiveness likely did not have any kind of moral underpinning. The introduction and proliferation of Meta’s latest product - Smart Glasses - also enraged me, as more and more evidence is showing that a large number of men are using the hidden recording feature in nefarious and predatory ways. Who could have predicted it?

So I decided that was it, and I had to disconnect from anything connected to Mark Zuckerberg, and reclaim my life from the time-suck and delusion of so-called ’social’ media.

What I have noticed: 

• I am calmer and more focused. 
• I am reading actual books (not ebooks) again. I still read some ebooks, but I make sure I always have a paperback or hardcover book on hand to indulge in the visceral experience of reading language on a printed page. I forgot how much I loved that. I’m actually​ reading literature again, which is a big time investment but one more meaningful to me than scrolling on my phone. I may write in the romance genre, but I have a love for literary masterpieces that I’ve put by the wayside for much too long.
• ​I’m letting myself feel bored, without immediately trying to find something to do that involves my laptop or my phone. 
• ​I am feeling the urge to go places again, and not to be satisfied with a homebound existence with the illusion of social activity and involvement.

I’m at the point in my life and my writing ‘career’ that if it so happens that I lose out on self promo from not being active on social media, then so be it. I have a decent sized email list, a website, and this blog for posting content. I know I will miss out on lots of opportunities by not being in the thick of things on socials, but I’m at the point where 'missing out' is more of an attraction than a deterrent.

Because what I don’t want to miss out on, is my life and the people in it.

I am about to turn 57 years old this June, and I don’t want to live out my remaining years in a blur of likes and shares and meaningless engagement. I want to be fully focused on whatever amount of living I have left to me, and on the people I truly care for.

​I’d rather lose myself in a good book than in the endless scroll of social media.