Lessons From Quitting Social Media

Let’s get straight to it today, shall we? In the spring of 2025, I made drastic changes to my social media accounts. Here’s what I’ve learned since that time.

1. I really did spend a lot of time on social media. To be clear, I only ‘quit’ Facebook and Instagram. By ‘quit’ – I mean I deleted my accounts. It’s been over a year since I did so. I’m still on LinkedIn (a social media platform for professionals), and I do have a TikTok account, which I rarely use and have never posted on. Mainly, I wanted to follow the music of a first cousin. I also joined BlueSky, which helps me monitor news sources that I have found to be reliable and balanced. But the bulk of my time was spent on Facebook and Instagram.
2. It’s easy to fill up the time with other phone apps.
   • Much of the time saved was spent initially on searching and reading resources that helped me develop my theology of politics – essentially, what do I believe the big ‘C’ churches’ role should be in the life of the state, and by extension, the responsibilities for a Christian to be a good citizen of the state (of any country – not simply the USA). Of course, a lot of thought was given to how to live in the United States at the present moment.
   • I have also spent more time than I care to admit playing games or scrolling YouTube videos – sometimes these are silly, but sometimes they are educational.
3. No matter how big my ‘friend’ lists were on Facebook / Instagram, I really only have the space and bandwidth to keep up with a few close friends. In essence, the people I did things with beforehand are still the same people I do things with now. I’m blessed to have two close friends from college who live relatively close to me with their families. I also made a closer friend when attending a church near where I live. We had been acquaintances beforehand. This fits my natural personality – to have a few close friends. I’ve always been wired like this.
4. It gives me more time to carefully form the opinions I care to share with the world, rather than feeling pressured to keep up with the constant stream of posts, etc. This blog format helps me shape my craft (writing) and allows for more careful thinking about what I want to share.
5. It allows space for a private life and lets me give others the gift of privacy. I’m an introvert by nature. I do enjoy time with people, but I do need time alone to ‘refuel’. Even when I was on Facebook, I much preferred it when people at church or in my community would ask me specifically how I was doing or how my weekend was, rather than looking only at my Facebook or Insta posts.
   • Turns out, I needed that space to withdraw to really study a theology of politics.
   • Also, I needed space from certain family members after receiving harsh judgment and treatment, but no willingness to really handle any conflict on the part of other family members.
     • And my absence from social media allows certain family members space from me. Writing about the family rift that has occurred in my family is a sensitive subject, and any further writing is for a different day.
       • To my knowledge, none of my family members know I have this blog. Any references to them will be made with the utmost discretion.
6. I do miss some things about social media.
   • My mom will frequently send me things from these platforms. Often, I feel the need to fact-check what she sends me. Is this AI? Fake news? A bot? Sometimes, it’s hard to really ‘see’ what she sees because I don’t have Instagram.
   • I miss one of my good friend’s art pages. She’s an incredibly good artist, and it’s hard to keep up with her work at the moment.
   • If I return to social media, it will be with a specific purpose in mind and goals to try not to live and consume social media strictly according to algorithms.