I think a blessing in disguise of Elon Musk buying X (the Platform Formally Known As Twitter) is that the general public is starting to realize that social media is in the beginning stages of, well, lowkey falling off. I saw a thread of comments on a big meme subreddit coming to realizations such as "people desperately trying to find ways to get around the new Twitter limits reminds me of a junkie trying to get their fix" and "Reddit can get pretty toxic sometimes, but at least the communities devoted to niche hobbies are a fun way for people to get together and talk about their interests, I can't imagine anything worse for the soul than using social media to argue about politics".
Another reason why I think the public's perception of social media is changing is because Zoomers, and to a lesser extent Millennials who got in early on the "terminally online" lifestyle, are now old enough to reflect on and articulate how using the internet during the formative years of their lives have affected them. See this VR Chat interview of a former 2000s 4chan janitor, who doesn’t think he can separate his past online activity from who he is as a person today.
I'm one of those people who remembers very little about what a life before internet was like. As a '01 baby, my introduction to the then new(-ish) and foreign world online, besides kid-friendly venues like Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin, was in fourth grade when I discovered the Animorphs Fan Forum. It was like a whole new world: "look! A place where I can talk to not just one or two close friends, but to thousands of likeminded people! Here I can discuss my interests and my feelings without the anxiety of coming off as a boring nerd or hypersensitive crybaby!" Even better, it was overwhelmingly text-based, a godsend to someone like me who enjoyed reading and expressing herself through writing.
Since then, I spent the next few years on various social media platforms, coming up with new personas and ways to reinvent myself. I think it was, I don't know, 7th grade when I heard the word "meme" outloud, and my peers started to spend more and more time discussing viral videos and other internet happenings.
What started out as a fun- if not very overstimulating to a developing mind- escape from the mundanity of everyday life slowly turned into something that consumed my everyday life. In part because of a rough four years of high school, the internet became my safehaven and the only place I truly felt comfortable, interested, or at peace with.
That was, until quarantine of 2020 came.
What I'm about to say is something that almost all 7 billion people on Earth can relate to: for me, 2020 was an interesting time. 2020 was the year I turned 18, the part of your life where your brain really starts to develop so you get sweet perks such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking skills, to say nothing about maturing and learning how to deal with hardship when a global pandemic arrives.
When COVID hit, my Mom and I escaped to a beach house we had in Florida. During then, I needed to do something that I didn't have to do in a long time, possibly ever- I had to be in touch with my body, mind and soul. Not only did I need to keep a close eye on my mental and physical health, but I was also free from outside stimuli, the constant feeling in society that most people (but, especially women) experience that they need to shrink themselves in order not to be judged by a panopticon of critical eyes.
It was then when I had the huge "a-ha" moment- gradually, I stopped dissociating myself from my body. I no longer subconsciously thought of myself as a wall of text or an avatar on a screen, but instead a whole person who deserves to inhibit the world that she lives in. I know the saying "let yourself take up space" is becoming a bit of a cliché, but it was one of the first times in a long time where the feeling that you're a separate entity viewing yourself and the world from a tiny TV screen ceased. For the first time since childhood, I didn't feel like I had to fight myself or hide anything- I just was. What a freeing feeling!
Quarantine was also when I had time to sit down and reflect on my beliefs and perception of the world. Online I was a hyper-involved in "woke" circles that stems from the early days of social justice blogging on Tumblr. I was terrified of doing or saying anything that would have me on the "wrong side of history" and was quick to jump down the throats of anyone who trangressed these new social rules that really only existed for five or ten years. But it was then when I started to question this. On my Twitter account, I retweeted some lightweight heterodox posts (but nothing too heavy). I received a few disapproving comments from my mutuals, and decided it would be best to delete my Twitter account and start a new chapter of my life, a chapter where I experience the real world and all the people and things in it using all five of my senses, instead of just grudging through day to day waiting to log on and get the next dopamine hit.
I decided to write all this because I, like many people, feel like they're rapidly losing interest in the digital world. I've been experimenting with using social media the way it was originally intended for, when Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2004- keeping in touch with family and friends you know in real life. I love podcasts and Substacks, where you can listen and read the perspectives of people from all around the world, unfiltered and unedited, without having to worry about likes or shares or worst of all, that nagging feeling that you committed the cardinal sin by saying something "uncool". If nothing else, I hope that whoever reads this is able to find that my experience also resonates with them, the twists and turns that the road of life took them because they also stumbled upon the Animorphs Fan Forum when they were in 4th grade.