Six Months Later...(an update on leaving social media for good)

(An update to my earlier post about quitting social media).

It’s been just over six months since I pulled the plug on my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I have not reinstalled the Instagram app on my phone, and I actually recently took the final step of fully deleting both accounts. I had previously only deactivated my Facebook account (rendering it invisible to other users) and was simply ignoring my Instagram account. (Deleting the app from my phone was an effective deterrent, since it’s essentially useless on a desktop). Honestly, it feels good knowing that I am FREE of these things.

It’s so nice to just do things without even the slightest thought of photographing and posting it. I do still enjoy taking photos of things that I do or make, but it’s just for my own memory-keeping. I’ve realized how being on social media makes your life feel very performative and makes you hyper-aware of what others are doing and what they might think of what you’re doing. I do admit to having a bit of difficulty with actually finishing much artwork over the past year since I didn’t have any in-person shows to prepare for and didn’t even have posting things on social media as a motivation for finishing. I kind of hate calling things “finished” because then they are kind of dead and static rather than continuing to evolve and change (but that’s probably a topic for a different blog post someday!). I did honestly enjoy sharing photos of works-in-progress, but I also think that there was some part of my creative process that was somewhat constrained by thinking about sharing things…

I did consider re-installing Instagram and unfollowing everyone and just using it as a place to post things where people might actually see it, thus giving me an outlet with instant feedback without the obligating to look at everyone else’s stuff and spend lots of time scrolling and liking. But I know that I’ll just get sucked back in again. Plus, I found out from a fellow artist’s blog post on quitting social media that Instagram changed their terms of service to include the following:

Um, to put it bluntly, fuck no. Why the hell would I, as an artist, want to give Instagram (and apparently anyone they choose to sub-license to) a “fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post…” It’s hard enough to make any money as an artist without just GIVING YOUR SHIT AWAY FOR FREE! That license means that if you post something on Instagram, they can take it and use it for whatever they want without paying you anything and you have no right to pursue them legally for it. Realistically the chances of that actually happening are slim, but it’s just gross on principle and I’m not interested in participating. (A useful full post explaining the newest Terms of Use is here). The adage “if you aren’t paying for it then you’re not the customer, you ARE the product” definitely applies here.

I also considered just leaving my Facebook account deactivated rather than deleting it. I had some idea at the back of my mind of “oh but what if I need to get in touch with some person I worked with ten years ago?” But realistically, if I couldn’t find that person’s contact information through other means, either just by googling them or getting their contact info through a mutual friend, then probably there’s no reason I would ever need to get in touch with them anyway. I don’t really see the value of having a catalogue of everyone I ever knew in my life and having them know what I’m up to and knowing what they’re up to. Occasionally someone will tell me about some drama that occurred on Facebook, and it just makes me glad to not be on there. Even back in pre-pandemic times when I actually saw people in person, it started to be a bit odd how much social media was obviously influencing in -person interactions. A lot of conversation seemed to revolve around “did you see what so-and-so posted?” And it’s just weird to know a lot of details about someone’s life that they’ve never actually told you in person.

There have been a few times when I have participated in some art event that normally I would have dutifully posted about on social media to “promote,” and it does feel weird to not really have a good means of being a good participant in an event and doing my part to let people know about it. But I’ve come to question the efficacy of using social media for such things anyway, since your important event just becomes part of the general overload of stuff that people are scrolling through. I have put out a few email newsletters, but I’m hesitant to over-use those. I have personally signed up for and deleted countless newsletters, not because I dislike the content, but because I just don’t always have the mental bandwith to read them when they arrive. I think I tend to view items in my email inbox as “things I need to deal with,” whether that is work or personal correspondence, and sometimes newsletters just feel like they’re adding to the pile. So I’m hesitant to rely on them too much because I can only assume that others feel the same way about emails.

So, while I’m very happy with my decision to leave social media, there are still a lot of unanswered (and possibly unanswerable) questions about how the hell does one get one’s art “out there” without it? I think this problem has been compounded by the whole pandemic situation and the cancellation of local in-person art events. I’m not sure that if I was actually making a serious effort to make a living entirely from my fine art instead of as a freelance designer that I could justify not participating in social media. It seems like a lot of effort for a very poor return, but of course there’s always the thought that “this will be the post that someone sees that leads to some opportunity!” And that’s what keeps artists hooked. I don’t have any answers for fellow artists who are considering quitting social media but wondering what to do instead. I have more or less completely failed at my theoretical plan of blogging more and focusing on improving my own website, but I still think that’s going to be important going forward.

Fellow artists and fellow travelers, I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment if you’ve also quit social media or have been thinking about it, your thoughts on how to be an artist in the world without it, and anything else!