MAKING PEACE WITH SMARTPHONES & SOCIAL MEDIA
The more I read about the evils of social media, the more I know that I need to make for the digital door. There isn’t one of these apps that works to monetize your data. I’m addicted, I have been doing my best to walk away for over ten years, but I keep getting sucked back into their trap. I don’t want to use WhatsApp or Facebook or Twitter, or any Google produced apps and resources.
The problem, it seems, is that everyone else does want to use those software products. That means that if I need to communicate with those users, I have to ask them to change their behaviours and message me by using the more traditional modes of communication. I have to ask them to phone me, email me or send me an SMS text. For some reason that seems like too much of an ask, and so, they often don’t bother. I am also what is known as a victim of FOMO, or the fear of missing out. Because I choose to shun the social media zeitgeist, I often don’t have relevant information for many events and daily problems that arise.
FOMO wouldn’t be an issue if people accepted my wishes and made an effort to communicate with me in the ways outlined above. Then there is my smartphone. I don’t want to have a smartphone anymore. I want to take a sideways step and start to use my Punkt MP02 ‘dumb-phone’ instead. It makes and receives phone calls and text messages. The phone doesn’t have a camera or internet access, although it can work as a wifi hotspot at 4g speeds if required.
If my family, friends and colleagues aren’t willing to accept my point of view, then I am afraid that they will be the ones who will be missing out. It is time to take a stand, break the addictive cycle of endless social media use and send my smartphone to the tech graveyard (kitchen drawer). Over the next few weeks, I intend to wind down the use of social media and my smartphone.
I have an excellent compact digital camera to use instead of the camera on my phone. I’ll post photos that I wish the world to see here on my blog.
I’ll only be checking email via my computer, and I’ll be asking everyone that needs to keep in touch with me to do so via telephone, SMS and email. From the start of 2021, I will take a year away from all social media use. I’m not going to delete my accounts; I will furlough them and check them all on the 1st of January 2022.
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