Increasingly in free coaching sessions the topic of deciding whether to leave social media is coming up. For some this decision is being considered to ‘get more time back’, while others feel that social media may be disrupting real life relationships or amplifying feelings of isolation. There also seems to be a sense that social media has changed and wasn’t as useful as it was.

I went to google to see if leaving social media is becoming a cultural trend and ended up watching a YouTube video “Why did our friends stop posting on social media?” by the BBC. I had noticed that I was seeing more advertising content than content from my friends on social media, and the psychologist interviewed confirmed that this appears to be the case and that there was less incentive to post with the competition from influencers and advertisers. The other thing mentioned was that people have changed their opinion on sharing so much information about their lives, and are more aware of the downside of doing this. It was also suggested that we may have seen the ‘peak’ of social media, and that people will revert more to private messaging.

Another YouTube video “Why everyone is quitting social media” by Matt D’Avella, examines why social media has gotten worse. He also touched on the amount of advertising content, and talked to the CEO of Patreon Jack Conte who explains how when Web 2.0 emerged it enabled people to upload and share their ideas, and allowed ‘the follow’ so that you could get the information you wanted. However, the social media sites changed to convert attention into revenue, and are geared towards capturing as much of your time as possible (for example, with innovations such as ‘infinite scroll’), which has led to the sate of social media at present. Jack notes that people will pay attention to things that are not good for us, and the systems are powerful in getting our attention. This could explain how disappointed people feel now about their social media use.

Exploring the scientific literature, a recent study suggests the frequent use of TikTok may be linked to increased anxiety and depression, although other studies suggest some of the negative effects may be overstated particularly in regards to negative impacts on attention. There seems to be the need for more longitudinal studies with more objective measures, but there is an indication generally in the literature that frequent social media use is not beneficial giving some backing of the trend to leave it or reduce use.

So how do you move on from Social Media? You are the expert on you so your first step would be to ask yourself what has worked for you in the past when you have wanted to remove something negative in your life, and what may work this time. How would you hold yourself accountable? If you need some ideas from the experts then a YouTube clip on reducing or deleting social media (yes, referring multiple times to a social media platform for stories on the negative impact of social media and deleting social media is ironic) that may be useful for you is this segment from an interview with Dr Cal Newport conducted by Dr Andrew Huberman. People in coaching sessions come up with a number of great ideas that work for them to leave social media, and it is definitely an achievable goal. So perhaps it is worth asking yourself what your life would look like with less social media use?