Is Social Media Indispensable in Maintaining Contact with Others?

To many of us, social media seems like an important and perhaps even indispensable part of life. It’s hard to imagine that there was a time—not so long ago, in fact—when social media didn’t exist.

I’m not a heavy user of social media. I have a Facebook account and a Pinterest account. I check the former a couple of times each week and I pin things to the latter a couple of times each week. Pretty much every time I get on Facebook I walk away feeling like I just swam through a cesspool. There is so much negativity and vitriol there. There are so many examples of humble brags (self-promotion couched in seemingly humble statements) and unproductive debates. At least a dozen times over the last few years I have contemplated deleting my Facebook account.

On the one hand, it seems like an easy choice. I’m not benefiting from it that much, so get rid of it. On the other hand, I feel like I would have no idea what is going on in the lives of people around me. I have a number of friends (true friends, not just “friends” in a we-occasionally-like-each-others-posts-on-Facebook sense) who share important information solely on Facebook. The only way I know about pregnancies, the deaths of close loved ones, divorces, career changes, etc. is because of Facebook.

Interestingly, when we lost power and running water during our severe winter storm last month, the only place we could see updates on the water situation was on our city’s Facebook page! They were updating information there, but not on the city website, which is where we initially went on our phones for information. This is a communication failure on their end, but my point here is that we were able to access critical information on Facebook that we weren’t finding in other places.

I feel reluctant to delete my Facebook account because of things like this. I’d like to think that, in the absence of having an account, my friends would stay in contact with me via phone calls, emails, text messages, etc. However, I’m doubtful this would happen. This isn’t because my friends don’t like me (though perhaps there is something to be gleaned here regarding the nature of our friendships), but because I doubt they’d notice my absence. How would they notice one person is missing from among 1,000+ friends? Even if they do notice, would they take the time to send an email or text message? Of course, it takes two individuals to make a friendship work, so I’m not putting the onus on my friends to maintain contact. I’ve asked myself these same questions. Will I notice I’m not in contact with my friends? Will I take the time to send emails, text messages, etc.? I’m concerned I won’t do this as much as I should.

I haven’t decided whether or not do delete my Facebook account. I actually find my Pinterest account to be quite useful, and I don’t really use it as “social” media. I don’t connect with others on it; I simply use it as a way to find, organize, and store links to recipes and other ideas. I’m going to be thinking about my Facebook account for the next couple of weeks. If you’ve ever debated getting rid of your social media accounts, then you might find these articles on the topic to be interesting:

• I Quit Social Media and Here’s What Happened
• I Gave Up All Social Media for One Full Year. Here’s My Report from the Other Side
• I Quit Social Media for 65 Weeks. This Is What I Learned
• 1 Year Without Social Media

I’ll share a post soon with some ideas regarding how one might maintain contact with friends without the convenience of social media. In the meanwhile, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you use social media? If so, have you ever contemplated getting off of it? If not, why do you avoid it? How do you maintain contact with friends in a world so heavily dependent on its use?

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Encouraging Hearts and Home, Over the Moon, and Busy Monday.