I was never a big fan of social media due to the negative impact it has on people’s minds and lives, as it is out of alignment with what it means to be a fully functioning and physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually healthy human being. I was reluctant to create a Facebook account back in 2008. I was hesitant about getting onto Twitter in 2009. I was resistant to start using Instagram and held off until 2018. I cycled through active and inactive social media periods over the years. From about 2015, with each new year, I minimized my presence to the point that I stopped using Facebook altogether in 2018. In 2020, I reviewed my use of social media and went through many of my old posts. Even though I only use social media for professional purposes, as part of being an online teacher and writer, it was disheartening to see how much of my time, energy, and life went to posting on and interacting with people on social media. It confirmed everything I have been feeling over the years, including the deep desire to remove myself from the social media sphere, which always felt like a preschool where all the children are attempting to get some attention. Sure, many of my posts helped positively impact people’s lives for the better, but most were just noise, fillers, and a waste of mental and emotional resources, as is the norm on social media.

It is amazing to look back and reflect how well the entire entity known as social media has convinced people that they need to be there and need to use it. If you are any kind of entrepreneur or business owner, you are made to feel that you must be a social media user to avoid being seen as irrelevant or miss out on the opportunity to generate business and sales. And if you are anyone else, you are made to feel that you will be missing out on knowing what your friends and family are up to and miss out on being included and being part of the “it crowd.” So billions of people worldwide have been convinced that being on social media and using it actively is the normal way of life these days when it need not be that way at all. We have created social media to be what has become due to our participation.

For the past decade, people have used social media to do literally everything. People use it to vent about political views, get health advice, buy stuff and sell stuff, find dates, register for events, play games, and get updates about the weather, news, and you name it. Social media is used when we need to laugh, cry, be angry, and express whatever is desiring to be expressed within us. There is doubt that social media has played a lot of positive roles, such as connecting old friends and family members who desire to be connected and finding lost children, adults, and pets. However, it is fair to say that social media has created more harm than good when surveyed based on our global human condition. It has polarized people like never before; it has amplified bullying and ostracization of individual people and groups. It has enabled people to gather for violent and destructive purposes; it has caused emotional reactivity to explode where cordial, respectful, and kind opposing dialogues have gone extinct. It has caused people to have narrower perspectives than ever to the point that most people are no longer capable of higher-ordered thinking. It has numbed us, and it has dumbed humans down severely. Blind group-think and persuasion by popularity have infiltrated most people’s abilities to think for themselves.

This year has been instrumental in showing the dire state of the human mind, and social media has a lot to do with that. Most people have lost all reason, logic, and ability to think for themselves. Being told what to do by others is now not only the default but actively sought after, rather than thinking for oneself and taking responsibility for one’s choices. The desire to live in fear has overwhelmed people’s desire to live.

Our most prized and precious commodity - our mind, has been distracted to the point of being completely hijacked. To get it back, it is not ‘more’ information or education that is needed but ‘less’. We’ve become overloaded with information to the point that most people don’t know what or who to believe anymore, and sadly, live in the illusions projected upon them by others, which grossly distort actual reality. The way to regain clarity of the mind is to remove the distractions, look within, purge all the mental garbage you accumulated, and start using your own guidance system.

For these reasons, I have decided to stop using the remaining social media that I was still active on, Twitter and Instagram, going forward into the new year. I do not want to be yet another source that distracts you from the reality you need to deal with. Instead of me posting pics of meals, trips, nature, or wisdom messages, I wish for you to spend your time making your own meals, taking your own trips, spending your own time in nature, and discovering your own wisdom.

While I wish to help others improve their health and wellbeing and live a higher quality of life, I do not need your attention to be a happy or fulfilled human being. Your body, your mind, your life, and your freedoms need your attention. Likewise, I don’t want to waste my own life on social media either. I value my life too much, specifically life in the real world, to continue playing this game of mental sabotage and social deception. I have seen how much of it I have already wasted over the years, how much it has drained me mentally, emotionally, and energetically and for no good-enough reasons.

This is why my message to myself and to you on the last day of this very psychologically- and socially-disturbing year is that life is for living. Live fully, live authentically, and live courageously. Live in the real world, not in the illusions and delusions of the media and social media. That is, of course, if you want to be a happy, healthy, and free human being. Otherwise, keep doing what you are doing.

Sending you best wishes for the new year and beyond. May you make the most of it and your life.