Why I Pulled Back From Social Media—but Never Really Left

I don’t think there was one specific day when I decided I was done with social media.

It happened slowly.

For years, I enjoyed it. I could check in on friends, congratulate somebody on a win, laugh at a silly joke or see what other people were creating. It was a simple way to stay connected, especially with people who had moved away from the Valley.

Then slowly my feed started changing.

Instead of seeing the people I had chosen to follow, I was constantly being shown political arguments, angry opinions and strangers fighting over everything imaginable. It didn’t matter whether it came from the left or the right. Everybody seemed convinced that the other side was destroying the country, and the platforms appeared happy to keep placing them in front of each other.

That is only my opinion. I don’t know what happens behind the scenes or what the people running these companies have in mind (I just work here kind of thing).

I just know how it started making me feel.

I would open an app hoping to see what my Facebook friends were doing and leave irritated about an argument I was never part of. Sometimes I wouldn’t even remember why I had picked up my phone in the first place.

Life is already complicated enough. I have a business to run, children to raise, bills to pay, relationships to maintain and a life that keeps moving whether I am ready or not. I finally realized that I didn’t need to voluntarily add another obstacle to my day.

So I started pulling back.

I still use social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram), but not the way I once did. It is no longer the first thing I need to see when I wake up. I don’t automatically reach for it every time I am bored or standing in a checkout line. I don’t feel obligated to know what strangers are angry about that particular day.

I will probably never leave social media completely, though.

Part of that is because I genuinely enjoy staying connected with friends who left the 956 and the meme of the day. These are people I may not see regularly, but I still want to know how they are doing. I want to see their children grow up, celebrate their accomplishments and occasionally remind them that somebody back home is still cheering for them.

Social media has also become a record of my own journey through life.

It has documented some of the biggest moments I have experienced.

Becoming a dad.

Opening my first photography studio.

Closing that studio and rebuilding the business as a completely mobile photographer.

Walking into places I never imagined I would be trusted to photograph.

Open-heart surgery.

Weddings.

Pediatric brain surgery.

Assignments involving the federal government.

There are photographs, posts and memories from different seasons of my life that I probably would have forgotten had I not shared them. In that sense, social media has become a strange kind of public diary. Not every page is important, and some of it probably makes me cringe now, but together it shows where I have been and how much my life has changed.

It also reminds me that a career is rarely a straight line.

There have been good years and difficult ones. There have been moments when I felt certain about where I was going and others when I had no idea what would happen next. There were things I once viewed as failures that eventually pushed me into work I never thought I would be doing.

I have never been motivated much by prizes or awards. I don’t collect them, and I have never wanted my career to become a shelf full of trophies. I am grateful for every opportunity I have received, but I give God the glory for opening doors I could not have opened on my own.

My goal has always been simpler than that.

Do good work.

Treat people well.

Keep learning.

Be thankful when somebody trusts me with an important moment.

And whenever possible, focus on something positive.

That does not mean pretending everything is perfect. It means refusing to spend all day feeding anger, fear and division when there is already enough of that in the world.

I would rather use these platforms to share a good photograph, celebrate someone’s success, tell part of my story or let people know that I am still here.

I am still here if somebody needs advice.

I am still here if an old friend wants to grab a cup of coffee.

And I am definitely still here if you need a new headshot because you are not happy with whatever artificial intelligence cooked up for you.

Social media is not completely good or completely bad. It is a tool, and like most tools, it depends on how we use it.

I simply decided that it no longer gets unlimited access to my time, attention or peace.

I didn’t leave social media.

I just put it back in its proper place.