My Mental Health Drastically Improved When I Stopped Posting on Social Media

How I'm moving past being online every waking moment and finding peace in my offline life

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Listen to the audio version and commentary by the author on the Open Secrets podcast.

Ten years ago, I couldn’t have imagined I’d ever not have the urge to take to Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis—often multiple times a day—to divulge everything momentous or mundane that happened to me in a given 24-hour period. A weird dream? A new laptop? A trip? A date? An epic fail? A good meal? All of them were details I was eager to reveal to friends and strangers alike.

Posting about my life felt like a natural extension of the Tripod blog I’d made over 25 years ago to splash every thought I felt was worthy of sharing with anyone who wanted to read it, and to being a writer of revealing personal essays. For me, the actions and the postings were a seamlessly intertwined pair, ones I never had to overthink because I was always myself—warts and all—on the internet. I didn’t think of myself as having a persona, or try to write in some voice other than my own.

But last summer, when I suddenly became a caregiver for my mother, and had to find her a new home and take over dealing with her healthcare, I was utterly overwhelmed. Not only did my day-to-day life now involve that of someone who’s far more private than I am, but none of it felt shareable in soundbite format, or even rambling paragraphs pecked out in hurried stolen moments on my phone. I lacked the emotional energy to deal with any potential responses, even supportive ones, when I could barely make it through each extremely busy, often emergency-filled day.

I could barely make sense of what was happening, of the role reversal of making major decisions for my mother and getting up to speed on aspects of her life I’d never had to handle or even be aware of before. I not only didn’t have time to post about that aspect of my life, I had no desire to; nor did I want to post lighthearted, ingenuine tidbits about what I was eating or pop culture responses just to be able to say I’d “engaged” with my “audience.” I reposted things here and there, quickly bashed out a few assorted items related to promoting my work, but my heart was no longer in it. What had previously felt like an electronic lifeline to the outside world now felt like yet one more thing to add to my already overflowing to-do list.

In her song “Radio” featuring Sharon van Etten,

Margo Price

sings, “I think I need to take some time out/And I wanna turn my phone off/I just wanna be alone.” In an interview, Price said that “…the song is very much about freedom. It’s about shutting down everything until you’re standing naked in your own truth.” The first time I heard “Radio,” many months before caregiving got sprung upon me, I immediately related. I’d already started feeling rumblings of wanting to get off the social media merry-go-round, of keeping some of my thoughts for myself, or at least saving them for venues like this one where I had more time and space to explore them, rather than the warp-speed pace of online life.

Despite that, I’d assumed that once the most crisis-filled time had passed, I’d return to blithely posting online like I had before. But when that time came, I no longer felt like I had much to say. When I saw new follower notifications, I cringed, sure that all of them were doomed to be disappointed by my lackluster output. After four months of barely using social media, the idea of posting filled me with dread, like anything I shared should be totally momentous to warrant taking up space in people’s feeds after so much time away. Not only was I coming up empty, the only reason I was working so hard to brainstorm what to post was because it had been drilled into me that, as someone who makes part of their living with words and has books (and an upcoming book proposal) to hawk, that’s what I should be doing. After all, the internet is filled with tips on how to build your personal brand; I’d even purchased Aliza Licht’s book On Brand in order to learn how to reach a wider swathe of readers.

I’m not the only one who’s over feeling obligated to post online. A recent Vox article explored artists and writers who go through the motions of online self-promotion and building a platform but find the whole exercise tedious. Tech journalist

Taylor Lorenz

explored the trend of resentment reels, which are exactly what they sound like: People posting online about how much they resent having to post Instagram reels online to please the app’s algorithms in order to court viewers, with increasingly diminishing returns.

I’m fortunate that I have enough steady freelance gigs outside of trying to sell books or classes or newsletters to make a living, so that I can choose to step back from social media, sharing fun photos when I want to rather than asking people to comment on Instagram to get some freebie of mine, or whatever the latest annoying engagement gimmick du jour is.

I miss the days when I loved posting online, when I was too busy being myself to think about my “personal brand.” But I also think it was easier to do that when I was younger, more carefree, and wasn’t facing some of the heavy adult issues I currently am, ones that don’t feel suited to summing up in a caption or limited character count.

It’s hard to recall a time before social media, but I’m grateful that, at 48, I can do so if I try hard enough. In lieu of posting, I’ve been reaching out to friends and family for one-on-one catchups where I can go into more personal detail about some of what I’m up to than I would feel comfortable doing in a public forum. I’ve been reading more books, rather than a page or two here and there, letting my mind ponder what it’s taking in more thoroughly than when I was scrambling to find a good quote to whip up in Canva to show off my reading prowess and taste. I still write my occasional newsletter, but I’ve morphed that from an onslaught of self-promotional babble that bored even me to include more philosophical musings.

I don’t hate social media, but it’s come to feel like a language I was once fluent in that I no longer speak. For a little while, I felt guilty about that lapse, like I should dive into it like people do with Duolingo, relearning how to keep up a steady output. But the idea had knots of dread forming in my stomach, making me realize the only reason I would be doing it was out of misguided obligation.

I’m not going to go so far as to delete any of my accounts, because they are a part of my past, and may be part of my future someday too. For now, I’ll likely have my head in a book rather than hunched over my phone. If that means I get an F in personal branding, I’m okay with that.

Rachel Kramer Bussel (rachelkramerbussel.com) is the founder and editor of Open Secrets. She’s a New Jersey-based writer and editor, and the author of craft guide How to Write Erotica and short story collection Lap Dance Lust. She writes widely about books, culture, and relationships.