I remember when I started dating my boyfriend years ago, my friends thought I made him because he wasn't on Facebook. This was when Facebook was just starting to get big and I was only using it because the copywriting agency I worked for required it.

Even then, I thought it was strange that people honestly thought if you weren't on social media you didn't exist. I even applied for jobs that said I wasn't active enough on social media, so they couldn't verify I was a real person. This makes about as much sense as requiring a video interview to be a writer, something I refuse to do as I'm being hired for my writing skills, not video skills and I don't have an hour to waste answering questions that I could answer in an email in just 5 minutes. But, I digress.

In 2020, I became fed up with social media. What an ironic name - there's nothing social about social media anymore. It's like you took the worst parts of high school, tossed in an unhealthy dose of political insanity, and shook until everyone was vomiting up lies and negativity 24/7.

I'd already severely trimmed down my friend list. Mainly, I still used it to connect with a few clients who I wrote Facebook ads and marketing posts for. A few old friends I'd stayed in touch with from high school thought I must be terribly lonely with my <100 friends while they had thousands. Seriously, it's not a popularity contest. My life's value isn't based on my friend or follower count on social media, but there lives were.

Between surviving Facebook and Twitter during the 2016 presidential campaign and the everyday nonsense, I'd had my fill, but when the pandemic hit, I was done. I couldn't take the endless stream of fake lives and negative news. I need a break.