This summer, my shitty HP laptop contracted a virus around the same time I deleted my Facebook account and I essentially went off the (virtual) grid. Writer Patrick Ross is taking a break from the never-ending distractions of the digital world, too. His "One Week Social Media Withdrawal" is outlined in a blog post, ironically, but he hopes that the time away will allow him to finally get his three-year-long project completed.
My laptop works again (though it's been a long road), but I'm still anti-social media, abstaining from Tumblr, Twitter, and especially Facebook. Don't get me wrong; social media has a lot of practical uses and can be a fun and social tool as well. But for me, the endless updates of what people were doing with their lives were too much. It was information overload of the worst kind. I knew too much about who broke up with their boyfriend every two weeks, who had a 3.67 GPA, and who was way too into drunk selfies. I almost felt bad for some of them, with the show they had going on. I almost felt bad for me, too, with how obsessed I could get with some of their pages, and my own.
So I'm off the grid, and it's great. Sure, I don't get to always see the pics from the party the night before, or participate in the occasional Facebook debate, but I have a real life, and real friends who, if need be, can tell me what's going on the virtual land of social media. Usually, we talk about other things.
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