The way I see it, Social Media is a monster of the most terrifying sort. On the outside it presents an alluring, innocent, appeal to draw in unsuspecting victims, but once you are within its grasp there’s no hope for escape. It’s an addiction where even though you know you’d be better off, safer, more alive, without it you continue to use it. And it continues to suck you dry.

There was MySpace during my years in high school and Facebook emerging as I went off to university. Now those two platforms have spread into: Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Linkedin, etc. I’m sure I’m missing many others. With my generation, Social Media became an integrated part of life. Just like with our mobile phones, how can we imagine life without it? It allows us to connect with family, friends, acquaintances, businesses, celebrities, and artists whom we would otherwise not be able to see or communicate with. This is the bright side of using social media, but of course there is the dark side.

Here is my personal struggle with social media. With the advent of the 2020 pandemic, I uninstalled my Instagram app, the only social media platform I was using on a regular basis as I had already uninstalled the Facebook app years before. Like most people, I was spending too much time scrolling. I strongly felt that it was affecting my mental health, more than ever, by generating a Fear Of Missing Out, comparing myself to other people, wanting more “likes”, but also feeling upset after reading toxic discussions and posts by those with different opinions that I didn’t agree with. I wasn’t enjoying it.

And so I shut down and stopped posting except for “big” life events. I removed many old photographs from my Facebook account and personal information like my birthday, where I live, and whether or not I’m in a relationship, religious, etc. But I could not take the final step of deactivating my accounts because #FOMO and I wanted to keep connections open with friends.

Now I feel stuck in a strange limbo of logging in every month or so, liking everything I see from friends, maybe even posting something myself, and then leaving again. As I wade into the sea of book publishing, my dilemma is seeing that many people in the industry believe you must have a social media platform for your work. Twitter is the big one in the writing world where any agent or author worth their salt engage and promote themselves. I ask, do I have to get a Twitter account to become a successful author? To my dismay the answer is maybe, likely yes. I’ve seen articles such as this one by Dan Blake that examine both sides. Social media should help us launch our product into the public where we will reap the benefits of having new followers, likes, and most importantly sales. It DOES help with sales if you do it right and have the time and resources. I have a good friend who spends well over 60 hours a week working on social media marketing. Heck, most companies have teams of dedicated people working on social media marketing.

Maybe I’m not dedicated enough, maybe I’m too lazy, or maybe I don’t want it HARD enough, but I do not want to be responsible for updating yet another platform, putting on a face (even if it’s a genuine face) to the world in order to get people to notice me. It seems fruitless to compete against the vast sea of influencers, paid ads, and Russian bots (Lol). If it didn’t work for my photography website back when I was motivated to do it, why will it work now? Because there are far more resources in 2021 to educate people on how to effectively generate SEO and use social media then there were back in 2012 when I graduated university. A great example is this post by Dave Chesson and also YouTube videos.

But where does this leave me in my mental battle?

Well, I’ve compromised by launching this writing website and setting myself a goal of regularly updating both of my blogs (the photography one too). I’ll add another goal that in the next quarter, I will research at least 3 different sources of tutorials on generating content and how to use social media effectively. I have not opened a Twitter account and will be dragging my feet through the mud until I’m caught between a rock. My hope is that I can hold off until I’m signed with an agent. In all honesty, I will probably end up activating Twitter, reinstalling Instagram, and staring into the maw of the beast before the end of the year. A wager anyone?

I frequently tell my significant other that if I had “all the money in the world” my dream would be to have a personal stay-at-home chef because I don’t like cooking. I’m going to add to that dream by saying that if I ever become successful, my money is going to go towards paying someone to administer my social media accounts :p

Cheers!