For more than five years, I’ve posted almost daily — often much more than that if we count story shares — on the Paws and Reflect Instagram account.
That profile is where so many things started. The website you’re reading only exists because I tired of Instagram’s character limit precluding me from fully expressing my thoughts. (There is some irony in the fact that I still don’t always feel like I fully express them here, either… but I’m working on that.) This week I phoned two friends — real friends, people who understand far more about me than my dog-focused rambles — whom I only met because of the online dog world. Scout’s training has been materially impacted by concepts and courses that I heard about through Instagram.
I would have told you three months ago that I had a healthy relationship with social media. My step back at the end of January was motivated by distraction (I wanted space to focus on longer-form writing) rather than any mental health imperative.
And yet.
Taking time away from daily scrolling and sharing and red-alert-bubble scanning has boosted not only the energy I channel into deep work but also my mood. My perception of the dog training world. My opinion of myself.
How could I — someone who prides herself on awareness, has multiple journal notebooks and documents at any given moment, literally put “reflect” in her blog name — have so misunderstood the effect Instagram was having on me?
My best guess is that I was focused on all the marginal benefits and, because spending a couple hours a day on social media had just been my norm for so long, blind to the (often larger) drawbacks. I could point to a dozen things about the platform that had been great for me and my dog. What more justification did I need to keep using it?
Not to mention that the Paws and Reflect Instagram felt intimately connected to this blog and my freelance work and my hope to someday publish a book as a “real” author. I convinced myself I couldn’t abandon (yes, that’s the strong word in my head) one of those pursuits without throwing away the others.
I still love social media. More than two months since I deleted the app from my phone, I truly miss some aspects of my online community.
But not all of these longings need to come from Instagram — and I can be a lot more thoughtful about the ones that do. So here’s to finding what I miss elsewhere in my life and considering how I can maximize the good while mitigating the bad once I do return to social media “full time”.
I miss knowing what’s going on with people (and dogs — so many dogs) I care about. There’s very real FOMO not scrolling through friends’ and acquaintances’ stories, not knowing quickly what they did that week, not being able to offer a word of encouragement or appreciation or simply acknowledgement in the moment it feels most relevant.
Part of this is selfish. If I’m less engaged with these people, they’ll be less engaged with me — out of sight, out of mind. Ever since I was small I’ve worried about fading into the background. Do I exist if I’m not being seen?
A bigger part is genuine affection. I’ve come to concern myself with these creatures for good reason. I like them. I care about them. I want to know they’re okay, happy, fulfilled — I want to be there, when they post about a trying moment, the way they’ve shown up for me in my own distress over the years.
But the reality is that quick bursts of distracted scrolling through a chaotic Instagram feed (let me go on record as yet another person complaining about the Almighty Algorithm) are not the best way to feel this connection. Instead, I’ve asked for the phone numbers of those I connect with most often. I’m setting up actual calls (better yet, video when I have the introvert energy available) to spend more engaged time one on one. At minimum, a focused text message, asking about a specific thing, already feels better than glancing at an update in passing.
Above all? I’m trying to let go of the pressure to always feel “caught up” on dozens of tendrils. Immediacy is not the only way to show someone I care.
I miss sharing what I’m doing to (what feels like) a large audience. This is neurological — I’m motivated by dopamine, I crave the chemicals of expecting that red notification at the corner of my screen, the tiny thrill I still feel when I see a bubble announcing that someone left me a comment. It’s my personality — I love connecting with other people, especially over “little” things, and the online dog world is perfect for that. It’s perhaps pathological, too. Sometimes I feel as though I didn’t really experience something unless I was able to share it. “Pic or it didn’t happen” is both a joke and yet also not at all funny.
But now that I am no longer regularly shouting into the void, I do a better job whispering into the ears of people I love. Instead of immediately posting a photo of me and my niece for dozens of people to glance at in passing, I send it directly to the two friends I know will appreciate the moment most. I think about sharing more in the context of who I’m taking with (what they’ll get out of it too, how it can bring us closer together) and less in the sense of my “personal brand” (something I still have mixed feelings on).
I’m also sharing more things with myself. I’d say “keeping” them for myself, but that doesn’t quite sound right — it’s not that they’re inherently private. It’s that I’m making an effort to be my own good company. To provide my own worthwhile perspective. To live a life worth writing about more than I try to merely write excitement into my existing days.
I’m back to journaling deeply in a range of messy Google Docs (pieces that are not polished, certainly, but still lovely to look back on) rather than ad-hoccing in a public Instagram story. This allows me to be more honest. It enables me to look at myself more directly. It creates an opportunity for me to decide what matters most — to me — instead of fixating on what experiences are easiest to translate into consumable content for other people.
But I also miss the external validation and fast feedback of living life online. When I’m not posting about an experience to an audience of people who will likely “get it” — and who will tell me they do, affirming that I’m not alone or weird or totally off base — I have to process it more deeply in my own head, or with someone else in real time, which can be significantly less comfortable.
Here I am not really trying to replace this experience. I think it’s healthy for me to get rid of. There is nothing wrong with the impulse to share and be well received. We are social mammals after all! But the more I can erase it as a dependency, the better off I’ll be.
So why do I want to come back to social media at all? I think it has to do with my introversion. (This line of thought is undoubtedly inspired by my recent read of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain, but mostly the good parts of the book affirmed things I already felt.)
Acknowledging my tolerance for stimulation helps me understand why I gravitate towards an online community over many in-person ones. I’ve long justified my lack of long-term, in-person dog stuff by our moving around — we arrived in Florida during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, which made training with other people difficult — and that’s not false.
But it’s also not the whole story.
I’m better able to process information on my own time, in quiet environments, solitary or with just a handful of other voices that make me comfortable. And I can have that experience on social media more easily than you might expect. The perfect barriers are in place. Instagram is exhausting in its own way, certainly — there is so much I do not miss about my daily time there — but it does not feel unnatural for me to share pretty widely with people on the internet. It does feel unnatural to get up in front of large groups, to put myself out there at seminars, to attend (or host) many real-time events.
Those things are worthwhile. I should do them sometimes! But I’m also not “wrong” for preferring other forms of connection — and here is one of the biggest things I’m processing as I simultaneously enjoy my break from social media and also want to get back on it.
While the digital world has flaws (many, many flaws) there are valid reasons online communication sometimes feels better to us introverts. “Digital minimalism” is a great idea. I’m benefitting from this step back. But I don’t want to fall into a self-righteous trap where I assert that removing oneself from social media is across-the-board, astoundingly, always the best thing.
Above all: I want to be more mindful of my time and energy. I want to continue investing in this audience — this community — I love.
