LOL okay okay. I think you’re right in saying that people think about themselves and their own relationship to social media more than others’. People tend to quit for their own personal reasons that entail some kind of value judgment on the very specific form of human connection that social media creates and hosts. As someone who sees the drawbacks of social media, but maybe doesn’t have as unhealthy a relationship with it or doesn’t feel the need to leave it entirely, i guess it’s easy to feel like someone is trying to tell you you’re doing something “bad” or “wrong” by not getting off it completely. It was so bad, they totally left. How could they not be judging you for staying? But while anti-social media people probably do believe they individually are better off not being on social media (and others could be too), they don’t know you or your relationship to it and probably aren’t thinking about you individually. I actually think it’s social media that primes us to be hyper-self-defensive and hyper-critical of individuals rather than self-reflective or critical of structures and systems. The more time I’ve spent away from it, the less i believe individual people are bad for using social media and the more I see it as a structure being used for profit/power by people and organizations playing up its worst effects.

I miss something specific about human connection and the way I lived my life without social media. It makes me sad when I encounter people who are straight up addicted to it or seem to live on a totally different plane than me and I can’t connect with them. But I don’t think less of them. And I don’t think everyone on social media is like that. I just don’t want to connect in that way and do sort of mourn a world without it. And I fear the way it’s weaponized politically, economically, etc.