I Quit Social Media in 2018 and Never Looked Back

The dropout movement is getting stronger by the day

On a beautiful autumn day in 2018, I killed all my social media profiles.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Xing, Pinterest.

I didn’t just deactivate my accounts. I went cold turkey and deleted them. That’s what always worked best for me.

I’ve been off social media for years now, and never missed anything.

It wasn’t always that bad though.

When I got on Facebook, it was fun at first. I reconnected with old friends, and I made new contacts to people all over the world.

With Twitter, I felt that I’d directly reach an audience I wouldn’t have reached otherwise. As a writer, I was starting to build my personal brand.

Instagram gave me the opportunity to share moments of my life with others, and I’d be able to take more part in my friends’ lives as well.

But soon it all turned into a massive source of stress.

Quality connections were replaced by ads, spam and manipulation.

Corporations flooded the platforms with commercial messaging.

Buy this, buy that.

Then the trolls came out, and everyone started feeding them.

The tone got rough and aggressive.

Remember Cambridge Analytica? For me, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I didn’t want to keep using platforms that I felt were harming me.

While on a hiking trip, I canceled all my accounts except for one – my LinkedIn, out of a fear of missing out on business opportunities. (I try not to spend too much time there. It’s just as toxic as all other networks.)

I abandoned thousands of “friends” and followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in a matter of a minutes.

I felt a brief moment of anxiety, then relief.

And then I went on a long hike.

Looking back, I had 5 main reasons to get off social media: