How This Year’s Novena & Project 2005 Will Keep Me Off Social Media in 2023

4-year-old me unknowingly practicing how social media would make me feel over two decades later. lol. 

 I had a very long list of intentions for this year’s 54-day Rosary novena and St. Andrew Christmas novena. Some intentions overlapped (such as specific ones for my health) but there were two special ones that I couldn’t get off my mind while praying the novena — “for clarity on whether to quit Twitter or keep the profile” and “that I may use Instagram healthily and kick the obsession/addiction I have to it.”

I don’t know if “obsession” is the right word but “addiction” is. I easily gave up Twitter for St. Michael’s Lent and Advent but I couldn’t do it for Instagram. I did Ember Days off — and they were lovely! — but as soon as I returned, it was back on the hamster wheel. I deleted my Facebook account a couple of months ago so that’s one less headache I have to think about. 

I’ve documented my love-hate relationship with social media over the years. I’ve successfully given it up for months during Lent in previous years but it’s gotten difficult since COVID hit and I both lost my eyesight and became too sick to receive company without extra precautions that many people would rather not do despite my doctors’ (yes, plural) asking for them to keep me healthy. 

I think it’s because social media is the easiest way to keep in touch with friends and see what’s going on with them and give them updates on what’s going on with me. I need my community but I can’t get to them easily, especially as I’m spending more and more time in bed for days at a time. I’ve tried keeping in touch via email, text messages, and voice messages but very few keep up conversations through them. It’s social media… and, for some, social media only unless it’s a time-sensitive question or prayer request. So, I’m kind of stuck. 

And while social media has been very good to me — I’ve met some of my best friends through it and have learned a lot from others — it’s also been very bad. I already mentioned some of the personal pitfalls a few months ago when I had to start over on Instagram. I genuinely thought the fresh start on IG would help curve some of the addiction to it, but it didn’t for long. And I thought that logging off of Twitter for a couple times a week would help but, like IG, it didn’t stick. I’ve been trying to figure out what the best solution is regarding social media *for me* hence the novena intentions.

Even before the novenas were done on Christmas Eve, I had my answer to the Twitter intention. I’ll keep the profile and keep using hootsuite to post links and prayer requests but I don’t see myself logging back into my account until next October when I see who will want daily Rosary novena reminders. If there is a need (not a want) to log in before then, I will, but I currently don’t see a need for me to log in, mostly because I use IG to keep in touch with everyone.

As for Instagram… I have no idea how I’m going to combat the addiction yet but I’m going to start by taking all of January off the platform. I’ll be deleting the apps off my phone and iPad. There were two factors that helped me make this decision: feeling overwhelmed and burnt out (very much a pattern for me this year) and a little thing called Project 2005.

Project 2005 is something that has slowly been in the works for months but won’t begin until January 1st. Unless you’re my spiritual director or my mother, you won’t know what the project is about until it’s over… and that won’t be until January 1, 2024! Yes, it’s a year-long project that I’ve committed to and that will purposely take me away from social media for extended periods of time throughout the year. Hence why I said I don’t see myself logging into Twitter for roughly 10 months. There is a planned reveal of the project in early 2024 so y’all can see what that was all about. That’s all I’m saying.

As for feeling overwhelmed and anxious when logging into social media, this isn’t new but never was it as emphasized (to the nth degree) like it was during these novenas. It started with a simple and respectful comment on a random person’s reel — encouraging them while everyone else was dumping on the poor guy — and I was bombarded with random people I don’t know attacking me. Over an innocent comment in which I didn’t mention anyone; I simply told the guy to keep making videos about his journey in learning Spanish and not letting others deter him from that. That was it. I was completely shocked at the visceral hatred my comment received. And it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. 

I’m currently re-reading Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery (my favorite book in the Anne of Green Gables series) and it reminds me of how much I used to be like Anne and how much social media has sucked that out of me. As I said back in September, I don’t like the person social media has shaped me into. I feel perpetually angry and despondent after spending more than 2 minutes on social media. On any platform. 

It’s been disheartening to see how blatantly rude people have been towards one another and how many excuses are used when defending their choice of words. I hate it… and I try not to use the word “hate” unless I truly mean it. And I do. I honestly hate how much hatred is spewed online. Yes, there are some wonderful accounts, but even those receive some very hurtful comments that bring me down… and I’m not on the receiving end of them. I get angry seeing good, holy people getting attacked for… what? Being themselves and sharing their faith? Sometimes they don’t even mention their faith and there will still be negativity. It truly breaks my heart.

I haven’t even mentioned how much I loathe the endless scrolling feature and the random tweets and posts from accounts I don’t follow. This is where the “overwhelmed” part comes in. I follow a very small number of people (well, “small” compared to others) for a reason. I don’t want random content on my timeline. It becomes digital clutter that ends up making me very anxious and makes up more mental space that I don’t want to spare when my brain fog is particularly bad. Anyone else feel this way? Does anyone else wish Twitter and Instagram (and even Facebook) was like it used to be — with only content from those you followed coming up on your timeline… and IG not being TikTok 2.0 with all the reels? I’ve made *one* reel that looked fun but the rest are general just videos I’ve taken on my travels that I’ve wanted to share with friends. I have zero desire to be a content creator or influencer so I’ll stick with sharing for fun with friends and not trying to get more likes and whatnot.

Anyhoo, these final puzzle pieces to the social media puzzle sealed it for me — I will try to use social media as little as possible. I tried using the iPhone and iPad time limits feature but it wasn’t enough for me. I need to actually delete the IG app and block the websites from my browser. I’m doing it in January to start with. I’ll adjust my IG usage as needed throughout the rest of the year as I try to figure out what the best balance is for me. At the moment, it may just be logging out and manually checking specific accounts that are good for my soul and logging back in only when I want to share something. I’ll figure this out when I return to the platform on Candlemas.

I will still blog. This is my outlet for now, especially since I’m currently on flare-up number three in less than 2 months and I can’t move too much and will probably be stuck in bed for a couple of days again. 

Anyway, that’s it from me for today. I wasn’t necessarily planning on blogging again before my year-end recap but my brain fog hasn’t been too bad today despite the physical exhaustion so I thought I’d write for a bit.

I hope y’all have had a lovely feast of the Holy Innocents!

As always, thanks for reading and God bless!