Member-only story
Internet Time Machine
Why I Deleted All My Social Media Accounts
Sometimes there’s an upside to a public meltdown
This story is part of the Internet Time Machine, a collection about life online in the 2010s.
Some people are built to break. Others know how to collect the pieces and rebuild. Often I exist in the space between the two.
Last year, I deleted Facebook. A few weeks ago, I retired my Instagram account. Recently, I deleted my Twitter account, where I had nearly 6,000 followers. Peers are apoplectic because who deletes their social media? Friends wonder how I’ll keep up with them, and more importantly, what will I do without Facebook alerting me of their birthdays? Apparently, these are very important questions. The questions of our time.
A friend tells me I’ve isolated myself—what she doesn’t understand is that the act of removing the social burdens we bear is fucking liberating.
Maybe we should ask ourselves: When did we become lazy in our relationships? When did we start relying on platforms that own our information to do the work of conversation and connection? When did it become abnormal to not have a social media presence?
Honestly, I’ve grown tired of measuring the depth of my connection with the world…
