To delete all social media

[smarSarah]

Contemplating deleting everything, I only use Instagram but am wondering if life would be better without it at all. If you’ve done this can you tell me if it’s honestly made much of a difference to your life or if you end up feeling out of the loop with friends and family

It made such an enormous difference to my life. I found myself constantly envying those who had seemingly better lives and posting for likes/comments. Plus the advertising 😔

I went no FB, no insta, no twitter for about 2 years. Actually phoned and messaged people. I have FB now but it's just to check local.groups/market place.

I honestly think my life is better for it.

I will say a few friends gave me grief. Said all they found was "happiness and joy" online 🤢 and moaned if I'd not.seen their updates. But honestly if I mattered to them, they would have told.me by text or whatever. It was a bit like people who try and get you to drink when you're abstaining, the devil likes company!

Go for it. Set an arbitrary time eg one month and see how it goes.

Deleting everything I've found always helps. I don't really care about staying in the loop though - if it's important, family can tell me over the phone or text message. If it's not important and just a post on social media, probably shouldn't be clogging up my break anyway - the whole point of a social media break is to be away from all that chatter.

I've returned to SM now but kinda regretting it at times. I'm all for deleting. Life is much better.

I deleted Facebook a very long time ago and I never missed that.

I also stopped posting on Instagram but I have kept it for the odd story my family/friends post. I have found that very few people use it anyway so I wouldn’t necessarily miss anything. Anyone who you are close to would keep you in the loop without needing to see it on social media.

It's been a long time since I've used X/Twitter. Its usefulness just seemed to fade out.

I'm on Facebook but I don't post a lot. I find it more useful for groups and communities than keeping in touch with friends. I've found the block and ignore tools have come in handy there.

I do have friends who've dropped off Facebook and other channels completely. It is nice to arrange to catch up in person now and then.

Don't have any social media and never missed it. And I don't count MN as social media.

“Comparison is the thief of joy” and i wholeheartedly believe this. I keep meaning to delete them all but I’ve been procrastinating about it. I see so many of my friends and family doing great things and I’m just home alone with my 2 kids. I guess I have major FOMO so that’s why I haven’t done it yet

I use FB for information on our town, and the running club that I attend.

I post to Instagram about twice a year and only go on there when I post.

I've never done TikTok or Twitter.

I lose a lot of time to Reddit, which I don't properly count as social media as it's all anonymous.

I know people who have deleted all social media and have been happy with their choice. Do it if it works for you OP.

I don't have any social media, I was on instagram briefly but never posted and didn't really find anything my friends posted very interesting (sorry!) so stopped. I have never felt left out. The only tricky thing is some companies only have Facebook pages and not websites and you can't go on them without an account but that doesn't happen often.

No social media is beautiful. I got off FB ages ago; deleted Twitter (where I was very active) when Elon took over; never really have done much on insta. I am back on FB for local groups but that's all; I recently had cause to use LinkedIn and it really did my head in almost immediately. As pp said, set yourself a time limit (a month maybe) to do completely without, notice how you feel and think; go back on and review again after a few days.

All studies show that SM makes people less happy. It's engineered specifically to do that.

I had a break from social media for a couple of months once. It didn’t improve my life at all, to be brutally honest - I really missed joking around with my regular social media friends, especially the ones I don’t see in person, seeing their updates, getting their book and film recs and so on. Obviously I have real life friends
who I see and message, but I missed the regular small interactions with people I don’t see in real life very often / at all. The small fun things that wouldn’t warrant messaging.

However, I do think it completely depends how and why you use social media. I often see people saying that:

• they feel envious of other people’s lives on social media
• they feel under pressure to look as good as influencers etc that they follow
• they hate seeing people share distressing news content etc
• they have family/friends who share racist/scaremongering/conspiracy stuff that upsets them
• they’re irritated by people who share mundane life updates

but none of those things are the case for me. I only follow people I like and find interesting and I genuinely enjoy seeing their content, which is invariably funny / interesting / nice. I really like people’s holiday snaps and so on and my social media is pretty drama free so it works OK. But of course not everyone has that experience and for a lot of people it’s just not like that. I certainly know people who were happier after deleting everything.

I got rid of IG and FB in January (never had Twitter).
It has been so much better, I thought I’d struggle, but I realised a lot of what I was doing was looking at it for the sake of it. Adverts, weird A. I. videos etc. Don’t miss it. My social life is the same and I read more.

The important people in your life will have your phone number and email address and so can contact you and vice-versa. So go for it.

Do you have children? Are there groups you need to be a member of in order to get information etc? DH decided to delete FB without realising that made me the default admin person. So anything from judo, guides, gymnastics and e-sport now falls to me. I really resent him for it.

I think it depends why you're considering deleting sm. I've got a lot out of it but I do have time limits so I don't mindlessly scroll. I've found so many webinars on all sorts of things. Followed companies that I now use.

This is something I need to do, I need to delete all my social media accounts because it’s depressing. All I see if everyone’s life’s being perfect and amazing and it just gets to me. I think I need to do this if honest for my own mental health.

I deleted Twitter when Apartheid Clyde took over.

I regularly delete Facebook and Insta only signing on occasionally when I am looking for recommendations for hairdresser / things in my area.

I find life is supremely better also, I avoid the bigotry and intense racism that is the norm now on social media. I logged into FB as I needed to get some photos to show my hairdresser.

On my feed popped up two news stories, one of a missing 12 year old girl who happened to be black and the other the recent case in the USA of the woman who racially abused a 5 year old boy on camera and has been rewarded for it via a Go Fund me.

The comments on both were an absolute shit show and reminded me why I delete my social media.

Also I am far more productive!

As for friends - I am only out of the loop with acquaintances. Friends we keep in touch the old fashioned way. I have kept Facebook messenger though. I have friends across the globe so have chats on messenger and whatsapp that I use to keep in contact with them.

I deleted twitter last November and haven’t missed it - though there are a couple of people & I wonder how they are, but one I have on WhatsApp

I have Facebook and rarely post and am contemplating deleting - it’s my Australia friends and relatives that I feel I’d miss out on - but it’s a cesspit and Facebook has evil undertones

On one hand I would love to do this. I hate the comparisons that social media brings - seeing people out having wholesome family weekends, hiking, fitness, expensive days out while me and my dc slob around in pjs. It always makes me feel like I’m not doing enough.

However if I got rid of it there’s a lot of useful, inspiring stuff I’d miss. I love seeing people review books or share art or post about local events. It’s a shame everything is advertised through social media and there are very good elements about it but unfortunately the bad often outweighs the good.

find life is supremely better also, I avoid the bigotry and intense racism that is the norm now on social media. I logged into FB as I needed to get some photos to show my hairdresser.

I think this is the crux of it

i just want a group page for people I know not all the mass click bait

I only have mumsnet email WhatsApp and a phone number.
I dont do social media at all never found it interesting most of its bullshit.
I prefer a colouring book im my spare time very therapeutic.

I’ve quit all social media years ago. Best thing I’ve ever done (almost 🙂)
people at work hate it as they can’t check me out, same w DH

really weird concept if you think about it…putting up stuff about your life you can compare yourself w others

I feel like deleting Facebook. The racism in some of the news comments sections is off the charts and Facebook doesn't delete the comments.

I know people are saying 'I don't count Mumsnet / Reddit as social media' but they are absolutely social media. It doesn't matter that it's anonymous (most social media is, or at least can be, anonymous) - it's still fulfilling the function of talking to other people online and getting the same dopamine hit from updated threads, replies etc.

I use Instagram solely to follow local arts organisations, galleries, theatres, music venues etc to have reminders of what’s on, what’s coming soon etc — I don’t follow any friends and family at all, and don’t accept follow requests. I don’t use FB,Twitter/ X or anything else. It’s never been a problem.