My Rocky Relationship with Social Media

I’d say I was born in the wrong generation but I really like having gay rights

@gatesannai on Instagram

I am not a very good Gen Z. My parents call me an “old soul.” You know it’s bad when two dinosaurs start calling you old. (They read my blog so to be clear, that was a joke. I love you guys.)

I was born in 2002, which makes me too young to be a millennial but too old to be a zoomer. I don’t really like going out, I don’t think I’ve ever really partied a day in my life, I tried alcohol once and decided it was gross, I like tea over coffee and crocheting over clubbing and think we should all spend less time looking at ourselves. I guess I’m an old soul.

Earlier this year, I decided to cut out all forms of social media and unnecessary technology from my life for 30 days, as recommended by Cal Newport in his book, Digital Minimalism. I puzzled instead of scrolled, walked my dog, wrote endlessly, read endlessly, hung out with my friends and family daily—it was one of the best months of my life. But I’m not in a career path that makes it viable for me to spend the rest of my life like this. One, I’m literally a communications major, and two, I’m also an aspiring author.

If you haven’t heard, it’s kind of imbedded into the job description now. Creatives market themselves on social media. I might yell at kids for being on my lawn, but even this I must accept.

So I’m stuck between these two truths. When I’m away from social media, I live the kind of life I’ve always envisioned for myself. However, in order to make my dream come true, I need to be on social media. And I’m not willing to give up one for the other. You see the kind of tricky spot this puts me in. You see maybe why I call this a “rocky relationship.”

After my month-long detox—I partially returned to social media; I redownloaded Instagram even though it made me feel like I was sacrificing my first born for eternal youth or something, and then I also watched season two of Arcane on Netflix, okay even I see some merits in unnecessary tech.

Now I post about three times a week on IG and I try my best to engage with other people’s posts and add stuff to my story daily and leave comments and all that without getting sucked into the app, and that balance is incredibly difficult to find. I want to make this work, I need to make it work, because it’s part of that full-time job we talked about, but especially as a would-be debut author, I need every advantage I can get. Except, I still don’t have a solution or perfect answer for how to make it work for me.

Maybe one day I can gain hermit-writer status and disappear off the face of the planet to publish from some dark cave where I eat rats (that’s what writers are, right?) But today, I’m not allowed to be anonymous—I don’t think anyone is.

And on that happy note, you should totally follow me on @gatesannai on Instagram. If you want, you can track exactly where I had a social media-related breakdown and then stopped posting for almost 6 months. Oh, and while you’re there, it's probably best if you don’t tell those guys any of what I just wrote... This one can stay between us 😉