snowysweettea-blog

[snowysweettea-blog]

I uninstalled snapchat...and this is how it went down

Background

      I am gonna be completely honest, I don’t have the best relationship with social media. I live alone and I feel like with the who coronavirus situation it has been pretty lonely. I used snapchat to fill the void that the virus left in my social life, and at first it worked. I got closer to quite a couple people during online school, and I developed an expectation for snapchat. I thought as long as I had snapchat I could keep in contact with everyone, and that meant I would be happy. But expecting an app to make you happy only leaves you with disappointment.

        One of my closest friends from college started being more distant on the app when our semester wrapped up. I blamed myself, and started overthinking the whole situation. Streaks became overwhelming and my mental state slowly started shutting down. I was falling apart because the people I cared about weren’t being as responsive as they once were. I felt ridiculous, stupid even, why should I care if other people don’t respond? They are busy, they have lives outside of me. As petty aa it was, that stung the most because it felt like I wasn’t doing anything with my life, while all my friends were living and having fun. I felt insecure and vulnerable due to my loneliness, so I uninstalled the app.

The Process

        I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t extremely difficult, because boi oh boi it was. I had to break so many streaks that were over 200 days long. I would no longer be able to talk to my best friends through the app. i started to feel immense guilt and loss. I felt like because of this one decision I may lose several friendships and I didn’t know if I could deal with that. Was I overreacting, probably but I just had so much anxiety regarding the app that I was projecting it in every way imaginable.

      I posted on my private story saying I loved everyone and that I was gonna be uninstalling the app for a bit. Some of my friends reached out and asked why, while others didn’t. I point out this moment for a specific reason. I don’t like testing people, it feels wrong and manipulative. I feel like I was constantly noticing this with snapchat, it made me feel like I was inadequate. Lol I just sound super insecure, which I probably am, but it was hard. I had built up such a heavy and unhealthy reliance on Snapchat that I was constantly reading way too much into everything....whoops

     I wanted to be able to appreciate my alone time, and be more productive with my life and not feel like I have to prove to other people that I too have a life. I was embarrassed about how much I was posting on my story, and yet I wasn’t stopping myself from doing it. It was just such a miserable process. The first two days were the worst, all I could think about was the consequences. But after a while I stopped caring. I would call with a lot of my friends on discord, so I still felt connected, but it felt way more personal because of the voice chat.

     I was no longer constantly being disappointed by having to wait hours or late into the night for my friends to respond, since they would just hop onto voice chat when they were free. I still feel bad and guilty and think about the day I will finally be able to reinstall it. But part of me knows I made the right decision, it was what I needed. I still cry myself to sleep every night, but at least that is the only time of day (or night) that I am crying, so that’s a win in my book.

Conclusion

      Ok, I haven’t reinstalled it yet, I am still learning how to stand on my own two feet, and deal with my loneliness without it. I feel myself being so much happier, and wanting to be happy. I’ve gotten into dance, and now I am writing this post. I felt like my emotional state was tied down to whether people responded to me or not, and that felt so emotionally draining, and it held me back from being able to enjoy my life. So if you're going through something similar and are feeling overwhelmed by social media, remind yourself its okay to take a break. Breaks are a healthy part of day to day life and we all need them sometimes.

PS: I have no clue how to use tumblr