How I Survived After Deleting my Social Media Account

“Behind every successful man is a woman”-said almost everyone ever.

“Behind every successful person is a ‘deactivated’ Facebook account”- said no one ever: The bitter reality of this tech-savvy world we live in today.

Author: Bhumika Chhadva

As social creatures, we live for connection. But looking around, we see humans connecting: talking, however with an overabundant use of texting, chatting, posting and social games and a lot of it is from the roots of Mother Facebook. I call it Mother Facebook because just as a child clings to his mother during grief or happiness, the same way people cling to Facebook and post about every grief and happiness.

A post once read, “I want to deactivate my Facebook account, but I know I would be proud of myself and want to announce it to everyone on Facebook!”

Among 2010’s entering American collegians, 94% of them were using Facebook. If a “critical mass” of our friends is in social networking, its lure becomes hard to resist. If we don’t log in once in a day, we may feel we are missing out something: Such has become our need to belong.

But, one night I decided to take a big step away from the world of like and dislikes.

I decided to deactivate my Facebook account. Not for a week, not for a month, but for about a year and more until I feel confident that I have finally come out of this dangerous web of cyber addiction and shall not get into it at any cost.

I was a person with perhaps the most data usage warnings popping up on my mobile screen and I very well knew this was coming from the ample of internet usage through Facebook. I would sometimes even sit hours just scrolling on my timeline or others’ and doing not the slightest bit of anything productive. There are many advertisements which keeping appearing on Facebook pages and among these advertisements and marketing posts, I would get the most attracted towards clothing and accessories ones. Even though I would have sufficient clothing items to last for the whole year, I would still keep looking at those on Facebook when I had actually no intention of buying them and even no need of them. I found myself becoming so addicting that the first thing in the morning was too many a times check the number of likes and comments I had got on a recent post by me.

Birthday wishing was no more valuable because wishing was done over this social networking and also it was actually Facebook who would remind me of birthdays and special events as such. Facebook had actually turned into a type of a family person for me who would remind me of things, be there with me in my sorrow and happiness by giving its exclusive feature of status and photo posting which in turn would give my happiness or sorrow some attention and in turn making me feel that I actually do have friends. We may have 500 or perhaps 500+ Facebook friends, but however in the time of actual need, it is not all these 500 but a handful of 5 friends or family people who would actually stand by me; and to be honest, I might be the one going away from them by not giving them time because I might be busy posting about something or the other or liking someone or the other’s posts.

I had seen many of my friends (hopefully I wasn’t a part of this), post about mother’s day and type the virtual big hugs and love you messages, and on asking whether they actually did so, they remained quiet. Had they actually given a big hug to their mothers and spent that much effort and time on telling her how much she actually means to them, things would be a lot better. We spend less time with our friends and family out of this cyber world and as a result, our offline relationships suffer.

Two days of no Facebook use would most of the times for me, be followed by a glut of Facebook use. Using Facebook and keeping productive things aside had become like a “new normal” for me.

Somehow, fortunately, one night, just a week before my semester-end exams, with the grace of god on my thinking, I made up the decision to remove Facebook from my life by deactivating my account and uninstalling the apps along with disabling it from my phone.

I felt something really missing in the days that followed. It was something very difficult. But I knew that it was a win-win situation if I would somehow manage to control myself.

Though something tough to decide and implement, after deciding firmly, the implementation just follows in.

If we can try all kinds of diets for our body, then why not try this MEDIA DIET for the betterment of our mental, social and emotional aspects. Including more of nature walks, reading, hobby and interest related work in our media diet plan can surely do wonders. It has worked for me and has helped minimise by phone addiction to just maybe about 5% now.

Let’s go for this media diet and try out living the actual life outside and far away from the virtual one.

About the contributor: 

Bhumika is a 19-year-old spritely young girl who is pursuing her Bachelors in Psychology from Sophia College, Mumbai.

This powerhouse of a girl is also a Preschool Teacher/Facilitator at Serra International PreSchool,(Colaba) and a Licensed Baby Bonding Specialist and Parent-Child Attachment Play Specialist.

Wait, there’s more, she’s also an experienced Spoken English Teacher + Volunteer through TI Programme by Times Of India and British Council. She can be reached out at bhumichhadva18@gmail.com. 

You can read one of her previous interviews right here – Why is a teacher’s EQ more important than their IQ?