Over the past two or three years, I have gotten rid of most social media. I think it was the best thing that I’ve done in a long time. Let me tell you why.
I never had TikTok. I never had Facebook (except to find certain businesses and groups). I have only ever really had Snapchat and Instagram (and technically LinkedIn) if you count that. These are roughly the types of social that I have had - and I think they are decently mainstream for the purposes of this article.
I also want to lump in two more. Two more that are probably quite surprising. Email and YouTube. In fact, go ahead and throw all the streaming services in there.
Dopamine. And the bad kind.
I don’t really know that much. However, I do know that dopamine is one of the best and worst chemicals that our bodies produce. I will compare us to much older human beings.
It is funnny to compare to time before the industrial and agricultural revolutions because it seems so long ago. And, of course, I think that those times were largely worse than now. I completely agree with that. You would not catch me in the 1600s England. No, thank you, I’ll go ahead and pass. However, it makes sense to compare people from then with people today because of the stark differences.
Let’s keep it simple: I have read, and I believe, that dopamine is a motivation chemical. So, people from pre-industrial and pre-agricultural revolutions got plenty of that chemical because their motivation was to stay alive and provide for their families. Now, we do not have to struggle to get food, water, and shelter. In fact, we do not have to struggle to live a life full of contentment. So our dopamine hits have changed.
Now, people receive these motivations from doing easy things. Looking at social media. Looking at email. Looking at YouTube. These are all things that people do that triggers dopamine. Then, it makes us want more and more and more.
Dopamine, as stated before, is the motivation chemical. We don’t only get it from social media. We get it from eating food. We get it from working out (eventually). We get it from doing hard and difficult things (eventually).
Now, my free time looks like this: practicing music, fly-fishing, hanging out with friends, tying flies, etc. What I have found is that the more I slow myself down from the feeling of, “oh gosh, I need to be doing something right now”, the more I feel content and the more productive/strong/emotionally capable I feel. It is really just about that: slow down. I have to tell myself this multiple times a day. But it truly helps.
I think we should all slow down a second. Even as I write this, I am actively telling myself to slow down. Sometimes, I will start writing a sentence just for the sake of writing the sentence. I have it in my head that when I sit down to write, I need to be writing the whole time, which is incorrect. In reality, I just want to be true to myself.
Slowing down for me has allowed me at times to feel my true self. You know that feeling when it feels like you and the universe are vibrating at the exact same frequency? That feeling when you float in the ocean completely weightless to gravity? That is the feeling of slowing down.
This art of slowing down was born out of a desire to be more connected with the people around me at UVA. Being a fourth year, I have felt that haven’t spent enough time with the people I care about. Which is upsetting. It is likely because when I was a younger UVA student, I felt I needed to bounce from thing to thing, trying to keep my head above water. Now, I feel like I am a strong swimmer, making it through calmly.
Recently I have been thinking about that feeling of resonating with the universe. We can all feel it as human beings and, moreover, we should all strive to feel it. This year, I feel I have made the most progress that I have ever made towards becoming my truest and best self. All of this is attributed to the art of slowing down.
I feel myself being the calm person. Resonating deeply with the world around me. Which involves being in nature quite a bit. Which involves slowing myself down for other humans. Fly-fishing, mountain biking, hiking, surfing, cooking. These are all things that make me feel that resonance deep within my soul. I am the one who can stay up until 3am talking, shooting the shit only to be up the next morning ready to head deep into the heart of Shenandoah to fish. I will run 30 miles and get faster with each mile. I will have off days. I will have on days. I will help people with my whole self and nothing less than that.
That is what you get with no social media. I feel dialed.