Why I’m Taking a Break From Social Media (For Now)
My new favorite word right now is the word “sequestered”. You see it a lot in basketball memoirs, talking about how college coaches would sequester their team from the media, fanfare, and other distractions. One coach would even go as far as to book the team’s hotel 90 miles from the tournament game so that the media wouldn’t be able to bother them.
It seems nowadays, it is becoming increasingly challenging to remain sequestered from the craziness. To bring things back to basketball, modern players not only have to deal with the same media demands as previous decades, but they also have to deal with social media. As we close out the year, I have personally decided that I am going to keep social media at bay, and get back to focusing on me. Continue the grind, minus the bullsh**.
Too Competitive
Over the last few years, social media has been a big part of how I put myself out there as a hip hop artist. And it hasn’t been completely unsuccessful. Just in the last couple of years alone I’ve had the chance to collab and interact with some really dope artists and producers. It feels really good when you get acknowledgment from an artist you respect, and social media can be a great avenue to connect with people like that.
However, one of the things I’ve noticed is that you have to deal with an increasingly large amount of nonsense on there. DMs from random people asking you to buy their beats, utilize their services, and interact with their content. Random follows and comments from fake accounts. People paying for followers, likes, and comments. And so on.
The landscape is becoming increasingly competitive, and if you are not careful, you can very easily find yourself too becoming integrated into the craziness. Becoming increasingly concerned with how many followers you have, how many likes you are getting, and whether or not people really f**k with your content. Feeling like you aren’t good enough, aren’t popular enough, etc. And to me personally, I feel like a lot of this is spilling out beyond social media and into the real world.
Old People on Social Media
Old people on social media sounds like the title of a horror movie. And yet, that is the reality of today. Sites that were originally designed for college students and young adults are now almost completely populated by older generations. Which is fine. It is great that people of all ages and backgrounds can come together and connect socially. The problem isn’t the social connectivity, as much as it is the competitiveness that comes along with it.
Go on social media and you will find people in their 20s looking like they are in their 40s, and people in their 60s looking like they’re in their 80s. Go out into a local church, bar, or social gathering and you will find people becoming increasingly concerned with things like job title, relationship status, and financial status. “Where do you work?”. “What do you do?”. These are the first questions you hear when meeting a new person, before you can even fully finish saying your name. I’m sure to a certain degree it’s always been like that. But I do think nowadays a lot of that is amplified by social media.
Personal Satisfaction Over Public Status
When the natural harmony and balance of your life becomes out of whack, you may find yourself striving to fill those gaps in artificial ways. Friends, hobbies, passions, a healthy work situation. These are all a part of what makes a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle. Nowadays you will find people that have thousands, or even millions of followers on social media, but practically no truly fulfilling friendships and relationships in the real world. Personally, I would rather have it the other way around. I would rather have a whole rolodex of good connections, friends, family members, and neighbors, and leave social media for the folks out there that actually give a crap about all that superficial nonsense.
I will still continue to work on my site, work on my music, and continue to better myself as a young adult and young professional. And the last point I will make is that nowadays the beauty is that there are so many ways to make money online you almost don’t even really need social media anymore.
Back when I was working at Intuit as a part of the QuickBooks team, QuickBooks actually had an entire platform specifically designed for connecting Bookkeepers to clients. It was called “The QuickBooks ProAdvisor Network”. Once you had your ProAdvisor Certification, you could set your profile up and be eligible to start accepting clients, which would also grant you the ability to work independently, remotely, and set your own hours/hourly wage. This is just one of the many ways that you can set up your own practice and start your own online business without even having to mess with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter (X), or any of the other social media platforms.
Conclusion
To close out the year, I’ve decided that instead of using social media to try to meet people, connect with people, and put myself out there, I’m just going to go out into the world and actually do stuff. Go play pickleball and introduce myself to a new group of people. Go hit the driving range and get tips from some of the regulars there. Even just the other day while out at the community pool I found myself approaching one of the life guards there to ask him how he got the job, how he likes it, and what the hours/pay looks like. And that is way more rewarding than sitting there scrolling around randomly and aimlessly on social media.
Social media has a lot of pluses and benefits. Permissionless leverage. The ability to broadcast yourself to an audience of millions of people. Personally, I’m just ready to tone it down and take a break. I’m ready to put the phone down and get back to living a regular life. And I hope that after reading this post, I have inspired you to do the same!
