Love Letter To Social Media: A Farewell Of Sorts

As the year 2020 changed to 2021, I wanted to get off to a good start. I’ve challenged myself to start completing my Audible reading list. I’ve had a lot of “new things” and “first-time things” and I understand that I need to continue growing. It’s a challenge I’ve enjoyed, yet when I tell anyone about it I end up adding 3-5 more books to the list that they’ve enjoyed reading (listening to) previously. I’m not complaining - just sharing. It’s a positive to continue building this reading list. Not all the books are gems, that’s for sure. Lots of them are and I pass on my enjoyment (or the physical book) to like-minded folks.

One of my most recent readings was Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. One of my managers had emphasized some of the principles discussed within the book, but the one that really resonated with me was attempting to remove unnecessary distractions. Social media was highlighted within the book and I initially pushed back on the idea within my own mind. Social media has had a strong presence in my life since I was in my first semester of undergrad when The Facebook hit major college campuses. I’ve always looked at the different social media platforms as an extension of my personal brand, but the growing voices of people I trust along with the metrics I can see of how much social media I consume have had me second-guessing this time.

So I took a couple of weeks off. The book recommends 30 days and depending on your connection to social media, this duration may be important. I knew within 2 days which direction I was going to go at the end of this but I wanted to let the process work a little longer to be truly sure. I’m going to deactivate all my profiles outside of my LinkedIn page. The following will describe each one and the reasons behind my decision.

First, leaving Facebook. I’ll miss posting photos of my family and sharing links I think others would enjoy. I’ll miss seeing posts from my friends, many of whom I don’t see on a regular basis. I’ll miss the occasional conversations with individuals who also enjoyed seeing my family on their timelines. I’ll miss being able to make the “7 degrees of Kevin Bacon” game happen with new people I meet and our shared connections. I won’t miss the lack of fact-checking before sharing links and opinions. That’s not unique to Facebook by any means, but Facebook has always been my main social media platform. Examples include recent scientific falsehoods that were all-too-readily available to share to put fear and concern into the hearts of folks who were not in human health spaces or didn’t know how to “do their own research”. What a terrible phrase! Nearly everyone I know wasn’t taught how to do scientific research, yet the pandemic showed is it may be a skill required when leadership doesn’t step up… I digress from my actual point. See what Facebook can lead to?! It’s not Facebook’s fault… it’s my fault and our fault. Or at least it was my fault until I hit “post” on this article and then deactivate my account.

Twitter, bye. I never really embraced it and never really saw the point, especially when the messages doubled in size. A “sign of the times” was when I was searching Donald Trump’s tweets to see what our President was saying to the world. I won’t miss that. One of my favorite quips and it was “so Twitter” to me: farting on an airplane is unforgivable. Still makes me laugh! HAHA.

Instagram was the epitome of wasting time for me, but it did bring enjoyment and laughter that I’ll replace elsewhere with more stand-up comedy watching and podcasts. Pinterest has one board that I appreciated - the one my wife populated with gift ideas for herself so that I didn’t have to guess - and I’ll just have to ask her directly or remember. I’ll be asking. I’m terrible at remembering that kind of stuff.

I’m keeping LinkedIn. I’m going to limit how often I look at it to once a month. It provides a useful tool (in my mind at least) to continue down the path to success in business. I don’t need to be that connected to individuals as I have been and it’ll force me to maintain relationships in texts, calls, email, or in-person hangouts. It won’t be that hard but I will inevitably miss out on remembering birthdays, photos of distant friends, and how their lives are changing, and I’m sure there are things I’m not even thinking about that I’ll miss out on. Yet, I’m beyond excited to see how I spend this additional time.

Email me if you need my contact information and want to stay in touch: travis.cree@gmail.com. I’ll give you my phone number through that message but I’m still under the illusion that I need to protect my cell phone number. I mean, how else will the spam callers find me?! And it’s not like I’m disappearing. I like to think of it as being more present.