Susan Dunlop: Lead Believe Create
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I broke up with Facebook and Instagram in 2021
In 2021 I broke up with, or actually, I pressed delete and exited from, Facebook and Instagram for ethical and safety reasons: about women, children, and challenging the norm.
Women
For some time, I had listened to women of every age share how Facebook and Instagram stir up emotions of anxiety, depression, overwhelm, low self-worth, comparison, not feeling good enough, loss of self-confidence, lack, a failure.
Women I was coaching were finding that they got stuck in comparing themselves and their lives with others – personally and in their business – and that froze them into inaction. Many others were beginning to label themselves as having social anxiety.
How come they kept scrolling then?
How come they gathered up the courage to delete the app from their phone, for a week or two, look up, breathe a little easier, start to find some fun and start to feel great, then got sucked back in?
What caused them to soon be back scrolling from their first visit to the loo in the morning until lights out at night?
Children
Around the same time I’d watched the 7.30 report (link below) featuring Task Force Argos, which, in collaboration with overseas police agencies, had rescued thousands of children from abusers in their war against online child exploitation.
The documentary Children in the Pictures is worth watching to understand more.
Facebook stated that they employ 40,000 people globally to work on safety and security and that they’d spent $13 billion in that area since 2016.
Doing the maths, employing 40,000 people globally to work on safety and security wouldn’t be one person to every pedophile now would it?
It’s a very scary big problem, and our kids are at risk. It was often shared that the children, once caught up in the web, were shamed into not telling anyone. I have witnessed how that silence has led to tragedy within our extended family.
Me
In 2020, I watched the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”. (LINK to YouTube trailer) where tech experts from Silicon Valley sounded the alarm on the dangerous impact of social networking, which Big Tech use in an attempt to manipulate and influence. It set off my internal safety alarms that what was happening on social media wasn’t right and was going way too fast, beyond the majority of society’s understanding.
Yet it understands us all far too well.
As a coach of women at that time, I sat with personal questions to consider:
- Do I stick with my marketing plan and continue to post positive, inspiring, educational and entertaining material?
- Do I step away and take some time to observe what’s going on from the outside, not from the inside, of the chaos that was social media?
I stayed, because that’s what we do!
I still wondered, was I contributing to the problem? Could I do something different and see where that leads me? Was I feeding a machine that I didn’t fully understand?
If it wasn’t in alignment with who I was; and how I wanted to live my life; nor how I wanted to run my business, so wasn’t it Ok to break the cycle someplace? It wasn’t even a forever consideration. It was something I needed to test out for myself to find some blue sky again and look at alternatives available to me.
In any situation, only we can choose where to go from here. No one else has that responsibility for us as adults. Only we have control or influence over our own personal choices and the way forward.
Then, I watched the 7.30 report featuring ARGOS in early October 2021 (LINK to YouTube).
The straw that broke the camel’s back, as the saying goes, was watching The Children in the Pictures (LINK to SBS on Demand). I decided that DELETE was the right button for me to push concerning my social media contribution.
One day I might restart, but I needed to make a clean break at that time.
I just needed to find and then hit the DELETE buttons
On 20th October 2021, after posting a 4-day farewell post to my friends, family and business page followers, I deleted my personal and business accounts on Facebook and Instagram.
That wasn’t easy in my mind, which intrigued me.
I had to contemplate every connection, the worthwhile business groups, and events that I was now not going to see posted by those who communicate solely with posts and emojis.
How would I keep consistent communication with those that matter, not just give a lazy tap on the screen. I’d be missing daily Instagram stories about what good stuff was going on.. sunshiney-life stuff, never the normal stuff, of course?
Then there were all those photos I’d put into albums of our trips, anniversaries, loved ones since past. There were weddings and family gatherings over the years that I enjoyed seeing pop up as memories – they’ll be gone! How can I do it!!
They’re still on my phone and in the backup drive.
The social media machine does not make it one simple-step out the door.
Choices were:
Facebook deactivate or delete.
If deactivating, you will still have messenger. You can keep your messenger and you can reactivate when you feel ready for more. Deactivating keeps us still in the system. So, to delete, completely eliminates the account and messenger. Facebook has a delete button in the settings section, and it was deleted immediately once pressed.
Instagram to the naked eye gives you the option to temporarily deactivate your account within the edit profile section. Not delete.
I deactivated the account. A login screen popped up. I thought is there a next step and clicked that. It told me ‘welcome back’. I attempted to deactivate again and received the message it is only possible to deactivate once in a 7 day period, try again in a few days.
I found this very helpful article via Business Insider. (LINK to article with the link to click into your own profile is here). It took me to the Instagram deletion menu.
I deleted my account.
Personal Improvement is possible only through our capacity to reflect, with honesty. To do that, we all know there are better questions we need to ask.
Here are 20 questions to contemplate:
- What does staying on social media give you?
- What does the idea of deleting, not deactivating, your social media profiles raise for you?
- What would you miss out on?
- How could you make sure you don’t miss out on an event, birthday etc?
- What would you find that’s nourishing, soul-satisfying, better connection instead?
- What value does clicking onto Instagram or Facebook add to the minutes of your day?
- How many times per day do you click onto them?
- How long do you spend in there?
- How often are you thinking about what’s being posted even when you’re not looking at the screen?
- As a business owner, how much time are you distracted by what to post next on social media, how’s your current post going, and what others are posting… how much ROI are you getting for every second you spend contemplating social media as part of your business? You’d need to know the value of your hourly rate as the business owner to work that out.
- Where else would you do business if social media fell apart, got taken down, no longer existed?
- What principles or values do social media not meet for you personally?
- What does it give you – whether good or bad, it gives you something to keep going back?
- As a business owner, what other avenues do you use that gives you income already?
- Where did your current or past customers come to you from?
- How do you communicate most often: verbally, written sentences, memes, emojis?
- Do you believe you have social anxiety? What’s caused it?
- When was the last time you rang someone to wish them a happy birthday?
- What other avenues are fun ways to re-establish authentic connection with family, friends, community?
- We don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. If something has become addictive – it’s worth questioning what it is giving you? What emotions are you numbing that you want to numb by scrolling?
Answering even 5 of those, what would be the chance now that you would investigate the impact of social media on your life? Would you comfortably go and tell your friends and family that you’re deleting your accounts and for what reasons you’re doing it?
For me, over the past two years, I personally didn’t miss a thing since deleting those accounts. What I did find was I won back more time and concentration to reconnect with alternative and traditional ways to authentically show up for my business. Living authentic to my core values was more fulfilling than conforming or following the crowd, blindly, as it felt it had become back then.
I am very grateful to have given myself that gift of choice, when I personally needed to make a change. It didn’t break me, it was good, healthy and I’m thoroughly ready to bring my good work to the world, on my terms.
Read the post: Me, TED* and the 3 Vital Questions are coming to Facebook.
Please don’t hesitate to share this post or to reach out via the Contact form via this link and let me know.
Take care,
Susan