Is it okay to live anonymously?

How many social networks are you active on? How much of your day do you spend scrolling, posting and sharing? I know that nowadays there’s a big push to become more intentional with social media. I’ve even heard of people doing “social media cleanses” where they will delete certain apps off their phone to feel disconnected for a day, a weekend or even for a whole week. No matter how hard our iPhones try to set boundaries for us or we if intentionally break the habit of scrolling, there’s no denying that most of us are addicted to fake connectedness whether we want to admit it or not.

I think if I had to choose between living in the past or the future, I would definitely choose living in the past. My grandparents often tell stories about what it was like to live before cell phones and social media and it fascinates me. The first thing I noticed from their stories was that people seemed to be way more proficient at setting aside balanced, ample time for work and rest. Could this be because they didn’t have nearly as many distractions during their work time? They didn’t need to share every small moment of their days because they would actually get together with the people they cared about to talk and enjoy each other in person. Their work also didn’t depend on the people they could reach through social media. Today, many businesses rely on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn to reach their target audiences. I’m embarrassed to say it, but social media is a weak point for me in my business. Personally, I don’t enjoy sharing and talking about my work, not because I’m not proud of it, but because I don’t like everything that comes along with it.

“Will this photo look cohesive in my feed?”

“Are my captions too repetitive?”

“Is this going to help me attract the right clients?”

These are all common phrases that run through my head and make me dread posting on social media so much so that I almost always put it on the bottom of my to-do list.

So you’re probably wondering if this post is actually going to have a point to it or if I’m just going to ramble on about how I want to delete my accounts and live in a van down by the river. Okay...mostly kidding there...mostly. In all reality, I often ask myself why it’s not socially acceptable to live anonymously. I feel so much pressure to have these profiles and regularly post on them, but I don’t really want to. I understand that it’s necessary to have a business page in today’s world, but I’ve thought about deleting my personal pages many times. I don’t hardly post anything as it is, but it’s the social pressure that trips me up. I feel like everyone uses these platforms in an effort to prove themselves to the world. How messed up is it that documenting the one interesting thing we did all month can gain us social traction and make us feel so good solely by the number of people who hit “like.” If I ever feel tempted to post something, I challenge myself to think about the why behind it first. I ask myself whether I’m posting because it makes me happy or if my secret motive is to impress or show-off to followers. If my motive is out of any sort of boastfulness I often just forget about it. I’m perfectly happy living a great life with great people and not feeling like I need to let anyone else in on it. I have a desire to live an anonymous life online. I don’t want people to know me solely from the one photo I posted throughout my week. I know my opinion about social media doesn’t align with the norm, but I’m okay with that knowing that I don’t need to find my worth in the number of likes I could get on a photo that I’d waste my time staging and agonizing over the perfect caption for.