Why I’m off social media. Hopefully for good.

NPL
4 min readDec 13, 2021
(Maybe one last time …)

In October 2021, I deactivated my Facebook and Instagram accounts. For some, it was a bit of a shock given my consistent, dedicated presence on these platforms. For me, it was a long time in the making.

Why did you stop?

There are a lot of reasons here, but over this course of the last few years in particular, I started to pay too much attention to something I never really cared for in the past: the metrics.

Anytime the numbers would change, I’d panic. Why am I losing followers or friends? Why do fewer people like my posts or stories? Am I … depreciating?

Or … maybe people are slowly abandoning the platforms. Most definitely, however, is that I’ve linked my self-esteem to these numbers, and that’s fundamentally unhealthy. I used to write on many of these platforms:

“I do not want to be famous.”

A few close friends called me out on that, and they’re partially right. I sincerely don’t want to be famous. So … why am I on social media?

Subconsciously, I did want to be famous in some way. That sentiment finally percolated to the surface as a narcissistic monster I did not like.

That’s by design. Facebook and other social media apps want you to constantly use their…

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