About a week ago, I embarked on the journey of a lifetime. I'm not talking about some grand travels to Europe or camping in the mountains. I'm talking about leaving social media. I made the conscious decision to leave social media recently, for a wealth of reasons. Firstly, I don't really feel that the site was giving me much value lately. The only reason most of us are on social media sites anymore is to keep in touch with family and friends, some of whom we may not have their phone numbers. Social media bridges that gap for many with applications like Facebook Messenger, allowing others to instantly message or call someone even without their phone number. I see the benefit in that, I do. However, I also see how social media has become this breeding ground for some not so logical or even good reasons. The majority of my time spent on Facebook was scrolling through the News and Video feeds, and what I discovered in those places goes from sad and depressing to absolutely shocking and appalling.
Ever since the COVID pandemic began, the news feed has been an important place for many people on social media to go to see news from many different sources about the pandemic. However, the news after that point just kept getting more and more consistently negative. Article after article about pandemic tragedy, shootings, protests, and an array of other negative and worrisome topics can have a vast impact on your mental health after a while. Not to mention the fact that the only seemingly "upbeat" articles were ones about celebrity gossip where magazines and news sources were just picking apart celebrities in the most toxic ways. I'm not saying that Facebook is the only source of this; to be honest, all news outlets are like this. Even if you use Google News, you are going to see some of the same things circulating around. However, if you consistently scroll the News on Facebook, it can begin to give you a sense of ongoing dread and anxiety about the world around you that is almost unshakable.
To add to that, I also spent a lot of time watching useless, mindless ASMR (the hydraulic press smashing all those objects, or that one guy with his cool paint bucket videos that have seemed to mesmerize everyone, you know, the usual stuff) and also crafting videos on the "suggested for me" page of videos. Facebook gives the illusion that they pick videos that they think you would be interested in based on your activity on the platform, interests, and other factors. However, in the last few weeks, I began to see a darker pattern arise that truly made me feel sick. Among the 5-Minute Crafts videos and other types of lifestyle videos I enjoyed watching, I started seeing videos popping up every day that looked suspicious. They were posted by some weird account, and the videos would basically be like porn without the nudity. Oftentimes these videos involved creepy characters, doing very questionable things with others. I don't really want to go into much more detail than that, honestly, because it sickens me. Anyway, after reporting these videos every day to Facebook as new ones kept coming up in my video feed every day, they claimed that none of these videos went against their "community standards". If you clicked on any of the videos, you would see all the spam accounts posting "links" to sketchy websites; it was obvious if not blatantly obvious what the owners of these alleged "content creator" profiles on Facebook were trying to do. However, no matter how much I persisted, Facebook would not block or investigate these accounts. At a certain point, it became frustrating because I would go to look at my craft videos and instead see a video of some very unsavory behaviors. Constantly seeing these videos come up auto playing at the top of my video feed on Facebook was impacting my mental health in negative ways; it seriously shook me to my core.
I have heard of many psychology experiments on Facebook. A few years ago, many users were being shown specific advertisements in their Facebook feeds and the experiment was to see what type of psychological or emotional impact it had on people after numerous exposures to the ad. Of course, once the public found out about being in this "test" on social media without even knowing it, they were rightfully upset at the social media site. Exposing anyone to a stimulus multiple times without their consent, especially something offensive or disturbing, is going to have a terrible emotional and psychological impact on the person. It should be the responsibility of social media companies like Facebook to ensure users feel comfortable, safe, and un-traumatized when visiting their websites. Not to mention, think about all of the younger generation on Facebook that could potentially be getting exposed to "adult" content that they shouldn't be because Facebook is NOT safe! It is not. Anyone can see anything disturbing at any point in time. It doesn't matter what your settings are either; you'll still see gross ads for outrageously inappropriate things, or to my unfortunate circumstances, videos that would not stop auto playing every time I got on the platform. I could not continue getting on the site knowing it was like playing Russian roulette any time I wanted to scroll the suggested videos for me; I was done with that nonsense and done playing those games.
Ultimately, I decided to deactivate my account for now because I have so many photos I want to back up and save to my computer, and I just don't have the time to put into that right now. However, I will make the decision once I reactivate my account on how I will approach the permanent deletion of my account. Because I was not using the platform for posting a lot every single day anymore, it was easier for me to adjust to a life without it. The first couple of days were weird, but then I found other things to occupy my time that are probably healthier and better for my brain anyway! That being said, it has been a lot more peaceful since I quit social media. Sometimes I at least miss the aspect of hearing what everyone is up to, but I think to myself; the people that are most important in my life are the ones who are reaching out and staying in contact with me outside of social media. Those people, my close friends and family, are the ones that matter and are important to me. I'm all for making new friends, but at this stage in my life, I definitely feel like I have taken a step back, encouraging people who want to remain friends and know what I'm up to contact me via email, an almost Stoneage type of communication in this time. But it's no matter to me. I'm feeling better, and I'm letting myself take care of me and my life. That's the important thing. I found much of the time I spent on social media I was also comparing my life against that of others, and that is just not healthy. I need to be happy with where I am in my life and enjoy every moment and part of my journey as a person, and that's what I intend on doing.
P.S. I researched the phenomenon of what was happening to me on Google. Apparently, many Facebook users have complained about the same issue to no avail or help from Facebook. Someone even created a petition for people to sign a couple years ago about this problem, so this is something that has been circulating the internet on Facebook and has not been solved for a while. If you have any interesting stories about exposure on Facebook or offensive things excessively appearing on your feed, I'd love to hear your testimony about it. If you would like to share that experience, you can comment anonymously below or send me one of those "old-fashioned" emails @ annemariecarr1989@gmail.com
Stay safe out there everyone!
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