Before Facebook was a thing, there was Myspace. The Top Friends box (Tom, anyone?), the profile pictures, the music options, it was like a drug to my young teenage brain. I was hooked. Facebook opened its doors to college campuses nation-wide back in 2004/5 when I was 15 years old, and I joined the platform in 2006 after hearing friends from my high school talk how much better it was than Myspace. Facebook was new and exciting, mostly used by teens and college students to share their experiences and connect with each other. At the time it was harmless enough- mostly fueled by teenage angst and drama.

The following pictures are just a few of the hundreds of photos uploaded into my Profile Pictures album on Facebook.

Fast forward to 2020.

Worldwide, wars and terrorism are being fueled by Facebook groups. Governments rise and fall based on social media algorithms, and cultural divides turn into all-out culture wars ignited by false information and click-bate news designed to draw in readers specifically from social media. People from all walks of life use statuses, links, comments, and reaction buttons to throw ignorance, unkind words, and actual hate at those deemed the ‘other side’.

My 16-year-old self (for reference, scroll back to that first photo) could never have seen this coming.

On a less global scale, in the year 2020 I realized that 14 years of my life had been lived on, impacted heavily by, and seen through the lens of social media. Facebook and Instagram accounts held all of my memories. The albums and stories and statuses and posts spanned 14 years of birthdays, tragedies, celebrations, deaths, relationships, engagement, marriage, moves, pregnancy, births, and motherhood milestones. Everything was recorded in detail on those pages. Years, days, hours worth of data, all stored for safekeeping in a private California-based company’s data centers. I don’t know who these people are, but they hold the key to my memories.

When I think back to my childhood pre-social-media, I think tangible. Flipping through photo albums tucked away on a shelf. Asking my parents questions about people I didn’t recognize in the pictures. Hearing stories from family members about experiences recorded nowhere but their memories. Having friends over to play. Talking face to face and learning to interact intelligently with different age groups, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds. Doing my best to remember funny things to tell friends when I saw them later. Exploring, imagining, creating.

My childhood was experience-based, not technology-based.

Let me pause here to say this: I am incredibly thankful for technological advancement. Having the ability to communicate face-to-face with people living hundreds of miles, even oceans away is astounding. Being able to communicate an idea or thought quickly without having to wait until paths cross or wait until the communal telephone is available is incredibly freeing. The communication and community-building opportunities technology affords are absolutely mind-blowing, and for that, I’m SO thankful! I’m not saying I want to live off the grid. (Just to be clear.)

The reason I decided to, once and for all, shut down my personal social media accounts is simple yet multi-faceted: I feel like a less-burdened, more free, more at peace, more intentional, more positive, more curious, more creative person when notifications and DM’s aren’t constantly calling for my attention. I feel more in control when my memories are stored in my journal rather than a Facebook status or story. When my photos are stored in an album rather than on my Instagram account. When time has suddenly become abundantly available because scrolling feeds mindlessly isn’t an option anymore.

Since taking steps to leave social media, my kids have noticed my presence. They’ve noticed my increased interaction and the fact that my phone isn’t in front of my face while I’m responding to them. Ultimately, leaving social media is as much for them as it is for me.

I hope to give my children a tangible childhood. One where they see that I’m as interested in their life as they are. Where they have albums to flip through, questions to ask, and creativity to explore. One where they understand that having a device on their person 24/7 shouldn’t be part of the human experience- where they value human interaction because it was modeled for them by their mom and dad.

I decided to leave Facebook and Instagram because my children watch how I live and build their understanding of how the world works based on how they see me doing life. My hope is that by removing this large, 16 year, deeply entangled portion of my life, they’ll grow up with a more healthy, balanced view of technology. They’ll understand that technology is a tool, meant to be used to help us move forward, to help us live a truly more enjoyable life, and meant to be put down when we’re not working toward a goal. That they’ll see life as tangible and explorable, door open wide, with freedom-from-cultural-expectations beckoning, and have no trouble walking through the door with smiles on their faces. Because they watched their mom walk through the same door years before.