If you’ve ever done one of those sugar detox diets, then you know how it feels to realize how MUCH sugar you consume on a daily basis. It’s in foods you wouldn’t even expect – like the salsa you put on your eggs or the dressing for your salad. After a few days the fog begins to lift. You have more energy! You can think more clearly! And food – REAL food – begins to become more flavorful. The point is not that sugar is evil – sugar itself has no intrinsic moral value. The point is that somewhere along the line, your body developed a socially acceptable addiction, and you were completely unaware it had happened. You were feeding this addiction every day, all the while wondering why your clothes didn’t fit or if your skin had always looked this dull.
Friends. Sisters. Mothers. Wives.
Social Media is sugar to your heart and soul.
Facebook Depression is a “thing” now. Ten years ago, in order to be envious of someone’s life, you had to visit their home. You had to converse with them face-to-face and flip through their vacation photos one-by-one. You could hear the hurt in your friend’s voice as she confided in you about an argument she’d had with her husband. Even though the living room may have been tidy for your visit, a trip down the hall to the bathroom revealed unmade beds or dirty dishes in the sink (like the ones you left at home). And neither of you – NEITHER OF YOU! – put on any make up. Because when you are living life with people, you are living in reality. Yours and theirs.
Flash forward one decade, and you have the ability to scroll through Facebook or Instagram and see cherry-picked snippets of all the best (and worst) parts of the lives of everyone you’ve ever met. Our culture loves to torture itself by idolizing perfection that cannot be achieved (only imitated) and using the failures and imperfections of others to make us feel better about ourselves. You roll your eyes at Debbie Downer updating everyone on how many times and in which exact locations her kid threw up last night or embarrassingly airing her husband’s faults on the internet. How tacky, you think. Thank goodness MY life isn’t that miserable! A few more scrolls and you’re rolling your eyes again – at the mom who cooks healthy food for her kids (and they EAT it!), the friend who finished a 6 mile run before you could even find your coffee (spoiler alert: it’s still in the microwave), or your college roommate back east who takes her kids to the family beach house more often than yours go to the park. Your irritation builds, because how dare they feed their kids AT you? And run 6 miles AT you? And be The Fun Mom AT you? You forget that the kids of Friend #1 eat that way because they are allergic to everything, or that Friend #2 has worked her tail off for years to lose weight and get healthy. And Friend #3? She loads that SUV full of kids and heads to the beach alone because her husband’s job requires 80 hours of work on an easy week. Your eyes see a screenshot of reality, but your brain sees something else. In a split second, it infers and extrapolates, and suddenly you’re sitting on the couch in your jammies simultaneously offended by your friends’ successes yet wondering why you aren’t doing all of these things every day.
Social media is not evil – social media itself has no intrinsic moral value. It can be a useful tool or a mindless timesuck. It can bridge gaps to build and maintain relationships or be the poison that brings a slow and painful death to ACTUAL fellowship with ACTUAL humans.
My personal struggle with social media is a bit different. When I’m not cooking, cleaning, snuggling, and dancing, part of my job is connecting moms with information and resources online, and social media is the most effective way to do that. Another part of my job is helping businesses integrate social media platforms into their business models by creating and managing accounts and profiles. Even my work as a homeschooling mom depends on using message boards/forums, Facebook groups, and blogs to find the supplies and expert advice I need to educate my children. Facebook allows me to stay in contact with my book club, the writing team at Wichita Moms Blog, and friends and family who live out of town and want to watch my kids grow up from afar. None of these things are wrong. What I found unsettling was that I began to reach for my phone instead of my wiggly toddler in a moment of boredom – or spend 30 seconds peeking into other people’s lives instead of 30 seconds looking at the clouds in the sky or the intricately woven spider web on my front porch.
I needed a detox.
My husband and I recently enjoyed a weekend getaway in Kansas City – our first solo mission since becoming parents 5 years ago. We ate meals free from the stress of our kids’ food allergies, and navigated the city unencumbered by strollers, tantrums, and diaper bags. I told him that I wanted our weekend to be ours. We were going to make memories that only we knew about. We took no pictures of our meals or the view from our room. When my husband would leave the table at a restaurant, I didn’t reach for my phone. I kept my head up, smiled, and looked around. The first night at dinner, my eyes were quickly opened. Couples my age and younger spent most of their meal time on their phones. Quietly. Couples my parents’ age and older were the LIFE of the restaurant – smiling, laughing, and engaging one another. A father with his 3 adult daughters caught my eye. The girls (in their early 20s) were dressed up, sipping cocktails, giggling and telling their dad everything about their lives. Through five courses, he asked questions, and they gave detailed answers. I watched them for the rest of the evening, and not once did anyone in that corner booth glance at a phone. To me, the message was clear: this man had connected and cultivated relationships with each of his children and still made time to take them out and make them feel special – and they still wanted to be with him! These girls had all the “social” they needed right there at the table. They are at the tail end of a generation that didn’t grow up within the paradox of over-connection in a disconnected world.
After that night, it was easy for me to leave my phone in my purse, getting it out only to check on the kids or answer questions texted by friends. I spoke to strangers instead of hiding from them. I spoke to my husband without interruption, and we made plans for our future. We laughed at each other, we reminisced, and we drafted a Joint Bucket List to attack together in the decades to come. None of you saw a video of our entire second-story terrace stopping mid-dessert to applaud 4 tone-deaf girls belting out “Don’t Stop Believing” at 11pm. None of you know how many times I managed to get us lost, despite using GPS. In fact, nobody even knew we were gone.
And guess what? Your world didn’t fall apart, and neither did mine. Here I am again, nibbling a little sugar here and there…but knowing when to quit. Knowing when enough is enough.
Do you need a social media detox?
