Being active on social media (99% Instagram) has honestly benefited me in innumerable ways, but I’ll count out a few of them for you anyway:
- Through all the projects I’ve created and shared online, I’ve been able to explore my own creative voice.
- It has made my work (both as a designer & as a Design Ops consultant) visible to potential clients.
- It has been the most fun channel for sharing my book with the creative community.
- I’ve met strangers who have become creative allies and now even friends.
- I’ve been able to keep in touch with the lives of old friends while we all lead busy lives and manage to post bits and pieces here and there.
And of course the list goes on. (I told you, it’s innumerable).
But the social media fatigue is also real, both as a creator & consumer. As a creator, the constant barrage of metrics – view, likes, shares, comments, is exhausting. It feels like performing for an invisible audience, hoping that someone’s looking and wants to interact. As a content-consumer, while I do appreciate the rare funny meme & thought-provoking reel, I can physically feel the brain rot in progress & that’s NOT a nice feeling to go to bed with.
As I was reading Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, I felt that she’s articulated my frustration better than I did in my own book (Chapter S: Social Media, in Inspired: The A-Z of Creative Unblocking). So here’s a snippet:
“In real life, you can walk around living life and be visible to other people. But on the internet – for anyone to see you, you have to ‘act’. You have to communicate in order to maintain an internet presence.”
“The internet has become the central organ of contemporary life. It has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive hyper- awareness and distraction, while overloading us with much more sensory input than was ever possible in primitive times.”
Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
When I notice myself opening Instagram to soothe (distract myself from) the smallest subconscious discomfort in my day, I immediately shut it down. And then, proceed to click into the app again. I’ve tried app timers and all that jazz. But the settings are oh-so-easy to over-ride.
“Well why haven’t you taken stricter measures?”, you may ask.
Because a part of me genuinely believes that Instagram is where I find inspiration & opportunities, and all the other headache is a price I have to pay for accessing it.
Now, I want to challenge that belief.
Well… I do have a few anxieties, which my Inner Critic ensures are top-of-mind:
- What if I get isolated, because I won’t know what my friends & other creatives are upto.
- How will I know what events are happening around me, which I might want to attend?
- What if I lose the “inherent knack” for communicating online which I have right now & which comes very handy for work when I need it. Will I regain it after a year?
So on and so forth.
But the only answer to the Inner Critic comes in the form of “experiments”. Experiments allow me to tell my Inner Critic: “Let’s not try to predict what’ll happen. Let’s do this & see what’ll happen. We’ll make notes & we’ll learn from it.” And so, I want to treat this Social Media Sabbatical as an experiment.
Every experiment must support or refute a hypothesis, so this is my optimistic hypothesis: Going off social media will change the quality of experiences, opportunities and friendships for a creative professional (and overall always-online girl) like me. To what degree? We’ll see.
Every experiment also needs some defined parameters. The only one I can think of right now is: 6 months of no Instagram, X or LinkedIn. I might update this as I go.
Every experiment also needs to be recorded for later analysis. So, while I’ll stop all my social media documentation, I’ll still be recording my observations from this sabbatical to see what feels good, what feels bad, and how life gets affected in those 3 areas of life – experiences, opportunities and social life.
My daily notes will be up here on my website’s blog, updated on a weekly/monthly basis.
See you on the other side!
Nishita
28th December 2024
nishita mohta 