My daughter is having an American Ninja Warrior birthday, replete with a kid’s course and the one above, where parents attempt to jump, pull, and drag themselves across obstacles many, many feet above the ground. There’s beer, snacks, and the familiar faces told to smile, say cheese, and pose, our practiced bodies stagnant for a few seconds to capture the moment.
We no longer have events without sharing, travel without posting, suffer tragedies without visceral footage, and even blast our own children’s faces and tiny bodies for the whole world to see, like, and comment. (Is anyone else creeped out by this but me?)
If someone held a gun to your head (and let’s face it, at this point in history, that’s a fair assumption), what are you going to remember? The hours you spent collecting, posting, and commenting, or the people you love, the experiences you had, and the chances you took?
I was late to the game for Facebook, joined Instagram this past year, and joined Twitter in the last few months. Why? Because I have a novel coming out in August and, you know, to be a writer, you must have a social media presence. An author platform. A voice.
I mean, if this article gets published, how is it shared? How will I spread the word if I don’t use social? (I honestly don’t even know the answer to that anymore.)
Or do you?
I was joyful before cell phones did things other than dial numbers, when picking up this little rectangle morphed into checking emails, working, FaceTiming, talking, hearing that maddening ding of notifications on the regular, and keeping me so tethered to a digital life that I sometimes forget to live my real one.
Gone are the days of unencumbered thinking, when going for a walk meant … going for a walk. On Mother’s Day, I got dropped to take a hike all by myself, and what did I do? I listened to music on my phone, got frustrated with Spotify, opened Pandora, took a godforsaken Instagram story, and almost sprained my ankle responding to random texts.
In a phrase? This is bullsht.
Then you ask:
But how will I stay in touch with everyone?
How will I not miss out?
How will I be seen and heard?
How will I stay relevant???
Let me tell you a little secret that’s hard to hear: You’re not that important.
Those people with 100k followers and a “brand”? They’re not that important either. Social media doesn’t tell you who good people are, what they believe in, or how they contribute to their families. It’s a sense of voyeurism, of narcissism, and if we don’t knock it off, our kids aren’t going to have any idea what the real world is.
Aren’t we better than this?
Apparently, I’m a minority here, as 2.5 billion people would disagree with me. And yet, every single person I have ever met hates social media. They roll their eyes, they complain about it, and yet they still do it. Like, daily.
It’s simply too much.
Back in my real life, I used to take up space by processing. Remember that? It was and is not a luxury; instead, it’s a necessity as humans to have this time built in. To be bored. To take up mental space with your thoughts, not feeds.
There are people who will argue with me of course. Social media keeps up connected! It shares information! It matters!
But at this point, we must ask: does it? Has it? Will it? Did it ever?
What it doesn’t do is what we were meant to do — interact, communicate, and form real relationships that have nothing to do with clicking a button.
I’m going to take time to notice things instead of commenting on someone’s feed.
I’m going to call up my friends instead of liking a photo.
I’m going to eat dinner with my family without a fcking phone on the table.
And this is my plea to you: don’t waste your life staring into a screen.
Connect to sensation, emotions, the sky. Look up, not down. Pay more attention. (Especially while driving, please God.) Some things, like life, should be about what’s right in front of you, about what you can believe in, about what you can see, what you can touch, what you can earn.
Not everything is made to be shared.
Since the writing of this, my book has launched and ironically, all social media interactions I now have are for solely promoting my book. No more scrolling. No more filling time. I now have a defined tool to help me sell books, and I can put it down when I need it … and focus on real experiences with my family. I’m learning to not be so all-or-nothing or black and white. I’m finding the balance …
Rea Frey is an award-winning author of several nonfiction books. She lives in Nashville with her husband and daughter. Not Her Daughter is her debut novel.
