Deleting the Apps

TikTok and Snapchat were the first to go - the victims to my pointer finger and an ever-growing pit of desire to run away that was beginning to feel insatiable. They also felt childish and garish upon my looming twenty-second birthday, like two friends from childhood that you can’t quite shake off but say embarrassing things at the pub in front of your new ones.

I hit delete like I was performing some sort of sacred soul ritual and, as a consequence, I felt proud of myself and better than everyone else. This was a feeling that was once best reaped by a social media dump and harvest, so it was wonderful to feel this level of paralleled superiority in its absence (please revere my sarcasm here).

Instagram was the last, painful hit. A doubtful finger hovered over the application as it vibrated, quaking with fear. Please don’t delete me. How will you know what’s going on?

Image Credit: Nepriakhina from Unsplash

Three months on. I don’t seem to care.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still prone to a Pinterest scroll (I tell myself that this doesn’t count as it helps to hone creativity and never makes me feel bad about myself). I also love stalking my crushes on Spotify. If you have met me, I have, without a doubt, seen your latest playlist.

I recognise that I am still very much bound to the internet and bound to my phone. The absolute irony of the swathes of posts (just like mine) on Substack that boast a life of social media absence. SUBSTACK IS SOCIAL MEDIA. WAKE UP SHEEPLE. However, admittedly, it is of the more productive variety, which is a sentiment that I have been attempting to master. If I must spend time online, it must be mindful, purposeful, or at the very least thoroughly enjoyed.

Growing up Without a Mobile Phone

I had the privilege of growing up in a house full of words. I am the only one in my family without a degree in English Literature. I decided I wanted nothing more than to be the black sheep and study politics instead, even though I would probably be getting better grades in my blood-given calling.

I think that this is the product of some sort of youngest-child syndrome, desperate to be different (I am absolutely no different from them). Anyway, to paint a picture for you - Radio 6 filled the corners of our kitchen; Keats, Satre, Blyton, and all of my other best friends lined the walls. With two English teacher parents, our dinner table discussions were usually about the GCSE set texts.

I remember groaning after being asked who I thought was responsible for Eva Smith’s death for the millionth evening in a row. No darling, you’re wrong, Romeo and Juliet is absolutely not a love story. Please pass the salt. Come on, you're nine now.

Image Credit: Weinhardt from Unsplash

Part of this intellectual conditioning manifested as the ‘no mobile phones or social media until you’re seventeen’ rule, alongside my personal favourite forced hour minimum of reading per day. Unbeknownst to my parents, this formed very sneaky children; I would satiate my excruciating technology cravings at my friends’ houses, logging into my secret accounts. Despite the screaming matches this restriction caused at home, I hate you!

All of my friends have Instagram, retrospectively, my parents were amazing for doing this. We were forced to be bored, which was the greatest way to grow up, as this forced us to be creative.

Mum I don’t know what to do there’s nothing to do in this silly house.

Write me a story then sweetheart.

I was an ugly, buck-toothed child with a very shiny library card. A leggy, awkward tween with a kindle in a ladybug case. An angry, painfully cliched teenager with a well-thumbed copy of The Bell Jar and my very own top-secret diary. I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote.

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Where Has All the Boredom Gone?

This raises my biggest qualm with social media and time spent on phones: it leaves no room for boredom. We scroll at the bus stop, we scroll on the bus, we scroll at the pub when our friends go to the toilet. I used to watch Instagram reels when I walked downstairs from my bedroom to the kitchen.

They say that young people aren’t drinking or having [censored] anymore. What will all the art be about?

The most beautiful thing to come as a result of my social media reduction - I’ll tentatively say - is that I have returned to the moments of boredom that I once felt as a child. During my time alone, I have been writing.

I have been writing. I have been writing. And I have been reading. I have not felt this inspired in years, and now it feels as though I have a firmer grip on the things that I truly love. Rather than a loose, uncertain, wavering tie that a life lived in tandem with showreels and supercuts breeds. It is hard to know what you love and what you enjoy when you are constantly reframing what you think you do to show other people. It’s like tampering with the evidence constantly. I think I was having a good time.

Ironically, I will publish this piece to the very internet void that I so scathingly dissect here, but at least I wrote this one without a break on reels. How very analog.