An honest chat on wanting to quit social media

hey welcome to another video and happy holidays if you're celebrating we had quite a lowy quiet Christmas at home this video is going to be quite unscripted and raw and it's just going to be me sharing some of my observations and thoughts and intentions for the next year and this is because a I enjoy watching this type of more relaxed um casual content and B I just want to try and minimize the edit as much as possible so I can spend more time with my husband enjoying his time of work and just kind of doing cozy things together obviously with the New Year approaching I've been thinking a lot more about my um intentions for the next year and how to ensure that my next year is more happy and joyful than 2023 was and one of the things that have been on my mind a lot one of the things that has been on my mind a lot lately is social media and the effect it has on my life on my mental health and in particular I'm not really talking about YouTube I'm talking more so about the um short form social media especially Instagram but also things like Tik Tok Facebook I've had a slightly complicated I would even say toxic relationship with social media for a while especially with Instagram but until this year I wasn't really a content creator I was just a consumer of content so whenever I had any kind of issues with it whenever it got too much I would just take a break I would completely remove myself from Instagram I would sometimes deactivate my account and I would just allow myself to recharge but since this March I started creating um content on Instagram I grew to a staggering 250k at some point it was 253k followers which is absolutely mindboggling to me and just insane and unfortunately while it brought a lot of positive things to my life it also um really Amplified this negative effect that social media has on my day to-day um I'm lucky because I was born in 1995 so I I only got my Instagram account when I was approaching uh 17 I think I was still 16 at the time but essentially my childhood was spared I didn't have any um serious social media that would be particularly addictive and I should be able to still remember the days before social media but to be honest with each year it's becoming a bit more uh blurry and I'm starting to really struggle to visualize how we all used to live but at least I still have that memory and for a while I would kind of kid myself that I could keep all of this under control because I am not too young I've experienced life without it and so it shouldn't um you know affect my life to such a degree but unfortunately it really has and especially over the past few months I've noticed just how difficult it is for me to focus I figured it might be a good idea to list some of these problems and issues that I have because of social media especially because I'm not sure where you are in your relationship with social media you might be somebody who doesn't use it at all and you're just watching this out of curiosity or you might be somebody who spends way more time than I do on social media because I to some degree have been able to maintain some control over it but um here are some of the issues that I have with it and if there's anything that you think I forgot to list or that I haven't considered please mention it in the comments below I would like to hear your thoughts but the first one is that it makes me feel distracted disengaged and not as present in my life as I would like like to be even when it comes to doing things that I enjoy reading books practicing some of my hobbies um all of that is kind of tricky because I keep getting distracted by my phone I keep wanting to check my Instagram I keep wanting to check if there are any new messages or notifications it makes it difficult for me to enter the Flow State and I'm just finding it utterly frustrating and on a similar note it sucks me in and wastes my time the time that I could spent with my friends making something learning growing as a person or even just resting just doing things that are not productive but that are uh making me feel a bit more recharged because when I'm scrolling on Instagram I feel drained afterwards every time I can really tell that it's not relaxing even if in the moment it kind of confuses me into thinking that it is additionally as a content creator I think it's even worse um in terms of nich for example we quite often talk about finding your Niche on YouTube and finding your audience that enjoys this Niche but I think Instagram is even worse and it really boxes people in so once you find a format that works and that goes um viral or at least is more successful than your other reals or whatever type of content you share on Instagram um Instagram really doesn't like you stepping out inside of that box or it becomes much more trickier to do so and I've really felt this pressure to continue producing content that followed the same format or the same basic principles even though I no longer felt excited by it or inspired by it and also the app really forces you to engage a lot especially as a content creator it's super high maintenance it becomes quite stressful a lot more stressful than I could have ever imagined and I'm sure Tik Tok has very similar issues but luckily I never got fully sucked into it and I deleted it um fully a few months back and that alone has really helped me not to kind of fall even deeper into the um anxiety that I was feeling at the time so I don't know how people managed to have multiple different accounts across different platforms that is a fantastic skill and effort and I really applaud it but it's not something I was able to successfully do at least not yet also talking about the algorithm it constantly changes and sometimes drastically just the fact that those changes are constant it really makes you feel quite insecure and I feel like it hinders creativity a lot especially for people who are trying to make some kind of income through Instagram or to grow on Instagram it kind of becomes this like this toxic m manager who keeps demanding more effort more creativity more engagement more more more to keep the client happy and coming back and interacting even more even though it's not actually paying you anything which is the bizarre thing and also another thing is how polished everything is on Instagram and how curated for ages I kind of enjoyed that I genuinely enjoyed the fact that I'm seeing these highlight re because I thought they're pushing me to create even better content and push myself improve my life um I was finding them inspirational I guess you could say but over the past year I've realized that they take a allll on how I feel about myself my identity my confidence and also coming from the perspective of a content creator it's very difficult to show up online especially when it's a a short re or short video in your complete authentic self some people are able to do it and I think they're brilliant genuinely I so impressed but for me it is quite tricky to do and I try my best to show the you know negative moments that I have or when I'm struggling when I'm unsure about something to share all of these um sides of my life as well but when you in those moments quite often at least for me I don't really feel like sharing that much I'm a very kind of reserved uh person and I am protective over my I guess inner workings and when I'm trying to figure something out until I've actually made some sense out of it I don't really feel like sharing it because it feels too ra and too personal no matter how much I try even my Instagram page is still more curated than I would like it to be I just really don't like the thought of potentially negatively affecting someone or making them feel insecure for any reason or making them upset this is not something that I would like to do with my online presence or in my real life and so yeah that's a point that I've been thinking a lot about and finally the longer we've had this social media thing going on in this world the more we become products and Brands and for a while people were talking about it like it's a great thing and a positive thing and to some degree I can agree but I am starting to get to the point where I no longer want to be a product or a brand or I've realized like I I can't even when I try to um it's not something that feels natural to me or good to me and I think especially on YouTube more and more people are starting to move away from that a bit and step away from that the idea of selling something to people doesn't excite me not because I necessarily think there's anything wrong with it or anything dirty it's just something that doesn't excite me I don't want to be a product and unless I can come up with a service that I think would really benefit people and would be hugely valuable and that I would also be excited about I don't really want to do that and then something like Tik Tok for example they constantly try and sell you things and it really put me off using Tik Tok because I don't want to be sold things sold things to I don't want to be buying many things I don't buy many things in my day-to-day life and if anything I found it really annoying so I think those are all the main problems but I would love to hear if you have anything that You' like to add to this list there must be something that I've forgotten about or didn't explain well enough and I would like to have a conversation in the comments well and I guess the question then is whether it's possible at all to keep social media in my case Instagram and to at the same time protect myself from all of these negative effects or at least mostly protect myself from most of them earlier this month I was genuinely on the bring of just um deleting my account or at least uh deleting my app but the problem is that I do enjoy it to some degree I still enjoy creating things taking beautiful photos expressing myself creatively producing valuable content uh interacting with people there are many aspects of social media that Instagram specifically that I actually enjoy and that I am hesitant to just leave forever and especially having grown my page to 250k followers it's not something that happens often and I don't want to give up on it prematurely if you know know what I mean I want to be sure about my decision and I want to be sure about um you know that I've tried my best that I've taken all the steps that I could possibly have taken so I'm on these Crossroads so to speak and my plan for the beginning of 2024 or perhaps for the majority of the next year is to try and find ways to actually keep Instagram and keep posting things and sharing things perhaps less actively than before but to try and make it more enjoyable and more authentic and also as part of that I would like to focus more on YouTube and I've been so uh thrilled about all the new people that have recently subscribed thank you so much um it really means the world to me and all of your lovely comments have really made my Christmas feel extra special so thank you very much but yes my intention is to see what I can make it healthy or healthyish and um whether I can maintain it and make it into something manageable because it would be a shame to give it all up but at the same time we only got one life and if I don't feel present then no amount of views likes recognition success matters really at least in my opinion on that note I've already started implementing some changes and trying to find ways to approach it in a more healthy way I now use Focus mode lot on my phone and all I do is I press a button and there are no notifications coming from my Instagram or Facebook um whatever else there might be some other social media that I've added to that list but that alone has really helped me and um has restored some of my attention span and just meant that I can focus on my book focus on some tasks that I would like to actually dedicate time to I also went into my settings and switched off as many notifications as I possibly could so they don't distract me and that you know has been doing a lot of heavy lifting as well and I feel much more present in my day-to-day which is lovely but my plan is to really read more and try to find ideas and hacks and systems that I could Implement that would mean that I don't reach for my phone as often psychologically I've been trying to really shift the way I look at it especially as a content creator so I've been trying to bring back some playfulness and some creativity and um get rid of my perfectionism to essentially just try and have more fun with it and I'm trying to stop worrying so much about the analytics and the numbers and to be prepared to lose a lot of followers that um followed me when I was sharing that content that no longer really excites me or feels authentic to me I would rather have a much smaller page that excites me and where I feel like me and my audience are on the same page on the same wavelength from a consumer perspective as well I've started to just unfollow mercilessly um I've always been pretty good at unfollowing anyone who makes me feel bad who makes me feel more insecure or who creates some negative feelings in me but I'm trying to get even more strict about it and then what else do I've got on my list um yeah for focusing more on creating content rather than consuming content because the moment you start consuming a lot of content you inadvertently end up comparing yourself as a content creator as a human as a person and I think it affects your creativity and it affects the way you look at your life and you can do many things to try and stop that from affecting you but I think at the end of the day you really have to just limit the amount of time you allow yourself to to spend scrolling that's really all you can do so what about you where are you right now in your social media Journey do you relate to anything that I've said just now and also on a slightly unrelated note what is your main intention for 2024 what are you hoping to focus on more I am a bit nosy so I would love to know please let me know in the comments below anyway enough questions and chatter thank you for listening to my unfiltered and unscripted or pretty much unscripted thoughts I really appreciate you being here I hope you have a restful and cozy rest of the year and that you have a wonderful New Year celebration and I'm wishing you a lovely rest of your day

Channel: Julia Tsilman

Views: 1,462

Keywords: instagram, tiktok, social media, quit social media, facebook, burnout, social media burnout, mental health, social media addiction, problems with social media, change your life, content creator, honest chat, quitting social media as a content creator, digital detox, time off social media, negative impacts, personal experience, social media habits, quit instagram, quit facebook, life without social media, more time, being present, depression, anxiety, overwhelm, social media break

Id: X4XkXYp0ZCA

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023