On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, as results were pouring in and peoples’ moods were becoming more and more agitated, I decided I’d finally had enough. I went to my computer, wrote a quick status update, and logged out. Then I logged out on my phone, and on my work computer. I use a long randomly generated password which is written down somewhere, so temptation couldn’t easily break my resolve. I quit Facebook.
Ok, not really. I quit for about 10 days1.
But in that mere 10 days I learned a lot about myself and about my relationship with social media. I didn’t really expect that. I took a break because the election quagmire was spiking my anxiety, and I didn’t think it was healthy for me to be too exposed to peoples’ opinions and knee-jerk reactions at such a turbulent time. I just needed a break from overreactions and panic and anger and misinformation and cruelty. I needed to realign my perspective.
And it worked. While being away from Facebook didn’t make me feel any more positively or less horrified at the election results, it went a long way towards leveling out my emotional response in the days that followed. But that wasn’t the biggest impact…