Why I Don’t Have Social Media

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Social Media was not something I grew up with. Facebook wasn't even a thing until my first year of college. I do remember MySpace coming out a bit before that. I remember being interested in MySpace for a little while. You could put your top 8 friends on your homepage. That was the start of broadcasting your life. When Facebook was all the rage, I remember being intrigued. I couldn't believe I could find someone from years ago, and see what they're up to. The idea is this is very interesting. So I did have a brief stint with Facebook. I'd say I had it for about a year or so. I found myself trying to be extra funny, extra insightful, and extra ME. 

Once I was in a serious relationship with my now husband, I stopped social media. I got married, had kids, and there was no trace of me on the Internet. Family and friends occasionally posted pictures of me or my kids, but mostly you couldn't track me down.  Not that there was a large crowd dying to find out my whereabouts, but nonetheless I was a mystery. 

The irony that I'm an Internet mystery is that if you talk to me in person I'll tell you everything about my life. My filter is pretty much nonexistent. But as I am content on my stance on social media I really wanted to think about what is so fascinating about it.

I think the overall sense is to show your life in a positive light. Obviously, we all want to do that in real life too. But from what I’ve found is people are more honest in person. I’ve literally said my kids are making me insane, and 99.9% of moms agree that their kids are also making them insane. But if I pulled up their Instagram, I’d see a beach picture of their full family during sunset with the caption, “blessed.” Now that’s great. I am also blessed. But if you asked me how my day is going, I wouldn’t respond with, “I’m blessed.” Blessed?!? I want to walk in traffic because my son lost his 4th water bottle and my daughter just called ME annoying. I could show you a picture of my clean house. I could surely do that if it was that one day of the month when it was clean. I could wait until the sun shines into my kitchen, maybe get a fresh bouquet in there. Snap a picture, and put it on my “story” on Instagram.  I’d have the masses thinking, check her out. She’s doing real well!! And that’s the point, right? You put that picture up, that nicely lit, good angle picture up for someone to write, “So cute!” It really is funny when you think about it because it isn’t real. It is not an accurate portrayal of life, our internet life. I’m not saying I am a better person than people that like and use social media, but I think we all forget that what we see on there can’t be ALL true. 

Besides the blessed family posts, I have seen a good bit of best friend pictures. I am 38 years old. I have had many friends, casual, lifelong, mom friends, etc. When I see a group photo of women with the tag, “Love these girls!”, I have a chuckle to myself. There is a scenario where those girls actually love each other. But my guess is, a couple of those women do like each other, and a couple of them are unsure.  We don’t know if “Susie” stated how much her home is worth, while wearing a designer bag, and that irked “Lisa”. Susie also has an annoying daughter who is rude to Lisa’s daughter. If we had this backstory, that picture wouldn’t look so hunky dory. Frankly, I think Susie got stuck in that photo. She probably didn’t want to be in it to begin with. But as a viewer, we see them as best friends. It isn’t all true.

Did you ever see concert photos online? Those really get me. There are no photos of the line to the bathroom at the port-a-potty tailgating to the Taylor Swift concert. There is no photographic evidence of the traffic leading up to the exit of the stadium. We do get the photos of the cowboy hats, and red-lipped audience members all getting along, singing happily to their $1,500 concert experience. 

We go to Maine every year. It really is magical. I love it so much. If I had a social media account, I’d show you the pictures of the coastline, the lobsters and the quaint town we visit. But what I should also show you would be the 8 hour drive photographs. Where my kids are sprawled out, socks off, screaming at each other.  I should take pictures of the Cheetos all over the car floor and my husband yelling at an “idiot” driver. I suppose nobody wants to show that. We like to fantasize our lives because maybe it makes us feel better. I always thought about the idea of a website that showed the real stuff, would be more interesting than one that shows the pretty stuff. I’d call it, “fake book” instead of Facebook. Over at “fake book”, we acknowledge the false narratives and rage against the machine. We’d show the crap!  We’d show all the unhappy, messy crap! Somebody give me a million dollars to make this dream come true!

Social media doesn’t thrill me clearly. I understand when it is needed for business and creator content. But for the average Joe, or me!, I don’t find it to be a healthy addition to my life. Now it can get lonely being out of the loop, but as an internet mystery that’s the path I’ve chosen. Once a friend of mine said she talked to someone that always “wondered “ where I ended up. That thrilled me. I could have ended up on a dateline for all they knew! This is an exciting idea. Maybe I ended up on Ozempic and I got really skinny and lived in Hawaii. This isn’t at all true, but wouldn’t YOU like to know?! We are all so invested in the little pretend snippets we see online, but what if mystery came back?

Sia didn’t show her face for years. How about it? Joe Pesci gives little to no details about his life. I like when I google someone and it shows little to no information. What if we had to actually ask someone where they live, how many kids they have, or what they did last weekend? As a pretend Amish person, I do like to be told face-to-face what someone’s been up to. Then, they can see on my face what I think instead of viewing the emoji I replied with under their “blessed family photo.”