On Leaving Social Media

And on realizing why it took me so long

Image by Philip Oroni

I’d done it before, but this time it felt different.

I hadn’t put a ‘goodbye’ post up on Facebook, hungry for a cluster of final ego-stroking comments from all those who’d miss me. I hadn’t agonised over not being able to promote our temple activities or about losing touch with schoolfriends. I deactivated all my social media accounts and it felt easy, clean, and right.

What had changed? I had more faith in the world. Let me explain…

I had been slowly falling out of love with my main social medias, Facebook and Twitter, for some time. The sweet little dopamine squirts when a post got lots of likes weren’t quite as satisfying as they had been. I was engaging in conversation less & less. The final straw was when hundreds of ‘friends’ kindly said happy birthday, and I didn’t recognise many of their names.

There are downsides to leaving. It did make me happy to receive happy birthdays from old contacts and friends I don’t see much. I love staying connected with my activist community online. I don’t have anywhere to share about my daily prayer to the Earth project now, and I think that sharing was helping to raise awareness. I also have a predilection for juicy gossip!

Still, I did it because it felt right - because it felt like a sloughing off.

The fresh realisation I had just after deactivating my accounts was: I trusted the Universe more than I used to, and I trusted that it would find ways of offering me what I needed without using social media as the vehicle.

The best thing that happened to me this year is that I was invited to become a member of a small support group of fellow Buddhist teachers from different traditions. These wise and compassionate folk (who are mostly women) offer a cushioned space where we can think together about how we lead our Buddhist groups and spread the Dharma.

This invitation came about because a) I wrote a Buddhist book which an editor at Tricycle magazine happened to read and like, b) he mentioned me in the office and I was approached to do an interview for the magazine and c) this interviewer was a member of this group and took a risk on me and invited me along.

None of this relied on social media, and I could never have fabricated it in a million years. My experience is that the good things I receive are often like this - they rely on chance, and on unlikely series of events.

Meeting my spouse? I just had to sign up for a two-year training in Buddhist psychotherapy and then be paired with a then-celibate monk (Kaspa) for an exercise involving trees¹! Finding Internal Family Systems, which totally changed my life? I just had to buy an anthology of pieces about being compassionate to yourself, enjoy the chapter written by the founder of IFS and then follow a very long trail of breadcrumbs to an IFS training course. Realising I was actually a dog person? I just had to watch a TV programme with a dog in it and ask a casual question to Kaspa (‘do you think we’ll ever have a dog?’) and be stunned by their response (‘oh, yes’) and realise I wanted one too and get straight online to look for puppies.

Here’s who we found - Aiko at 7 weeks

I realised that one of the reasons I’d been hanging onto social media is that without it, I didn’t think that the Universe was capable of looking after me. How would people find my writing here on Substack without it? How would any of my not-close but still dear friends ever remember me? How would I find out about important or exciting things locally or in the world? And how oh how would I get the important gossip??!!!

What’s underneath those anxieties? Probably some young parts of me², who believe that I have to be extra-clever or funny or loud to be noticed and offered attention to. Some parts that believe I have to work extra-hard to keep friends. Some parts that feel rubbish about themselves, and try to reassure themselves by getting me as many likes and shares as they can (disclaimer: there are never quite enough). All the young parts that don’t think I’m worthy of love.

Just so you’re clear - this isn’t a piece about how social media is evil and we’d all be better off without it. Some folk use it to stay in touch with friends and family - perfect! Some folk are a teensy bit compulsive with it - hurray! - we all need things that offer us easy pleasures and that sometimes numb us out a little bit. I still have chocolate brownies, overwork, watching Celebs Go Dating…

Many of us continue to monitor our relationships with social media over time, trying to work out if we want to tweak anything, or maybe leave altogether for a while. Rae is still deciding whether and how Notes works for her (lovely) highly sensitive system. Robyn also wrote about stepping back from social media recently, and had a similar realisation to me, saying:

The idea that you’ll hit some social media lottery and your life will be forever altered is part of the seduction of social media and also a part that I’m done with.

I never did hit the social media lottery. Will I go back to it this time? Who knows. I don’t think that even matters so much. I think (hope) that I am moving beyond the binary days of DOING-SOCIAL-MEDIA vs. TOTAL-SOCIAL-MEDIA-SOBRIETY, just as I have moved beyond strict dieting and settled into intuitive eating (including extra brownies).

What does feel good is trusting (most of the time) that without social media I will still have friends and a career, I will still find readers for my writing, and that good random things will still happen to me even if I’m not visible and continually reminding folk of my existence in the world of socials. That I won’t disappear. Or, maybe I will disappear a bit³, and that will feel just dandy.

Those young parts of me are feeling a little better about themselves, and as a result they can see the world with fresh eyes. They can notice how supported I am in every moment - by the ground underneath me, by this house, by my spouse and a few good friends, by the books on my bookshelves, by the food in my cupboards. They can remember how small good things come to me - unearned and unpredictable, the product of grace.

They can feel the love that smiles at them from inside me and from outside of me. The love that goes beyond ‘likes’. The love that knows me, that requires nothing of me, and that can’t get enough of me - cracked and flawed as I am.

Maybe you can feel it too?

Go gently,
Satya <3

Tell me: How is your current relationship with social media feeling? What do you like?(Let’s celebrate the good stuff.) What don’t you like so much? What tweaks might help you to find more balance? Which of your needs is it meeting? What other ways might you meet the needs that social media meets (or attempts to meet)?

Postscript: Just after writing this piece I read To Be (or Not to Be) Online by Lee Tilghman. It’s a great piece, looking at the cost of being online all the time, and challenging the ‘success model’ which counts money as the only measure of success and disregards meaning, time off work, happiness in our work etc… Lee also makes the case for Substack (if you are on Notes) as definitely being social media. I am on Notes, and I agree totally with Lee, and so it seems the whole premise of this piece is cracked 😬 Now I’ve confessed this to you I feel better, and I will move on with my day. Next stop - Notes!!!

1. Another story for another day 😉

2. Read about young parts in my piece about Internal Family Systems with puppies.

3. A couple of weeks after leaving, nobody on my social media has noticed that I have left social media - or if they have, they haven’t said anything to me about it. I feel slightly sad about this but not surprised. I am very fond of many people I only connect with on social media and it would take me a very long time to notice they were gone.