Follow Yourself: The Fine Art of Using Social Media Without Being Used by Social Media

If you’re outside. In the forest. Enjoying the beautiful scenery. Exploring paths and looking under rocks. But if you don’t share online what you’re seeing. Did you really have the experience?

The online wasteland we collectively call social media will unapologetically corrupt your life by indulging you in frictionless and hollow engagements if you don’t stop for a moment and define the real reasons you use the said platforms.

You’ve surely heard it before.

Social media is toxic!

But social media is bad not because it steals our personal data – at least not only. It is bad because it steals our attention and convinces us that our virtual life is much more important than our real life.

What started as an innocent act to connect with our friends has now turned into an unstoppable business model that controls our lives.

The worst part?

We don’t even think that we’re locked inside a virtual cage. We scroll through the life of others, thinking we are living while our real life is slowly vanishing.

When social media giants talk about their products. They speak as if they are doing us all a favor. Sure, there are definitely benefits. We can easily connect with our friends in a way that was unthinkable 20 years ago. And yet, if not properly managed – which is exactly what happens. Social media eventually becomes a beacon that radiates corrupt thoughts and prevents you from completing your projects.

And though used by billions. If we look closely, we can identify two main groups of people currently living online:

The minds of the first group are hijacked by the narratives circling in the online space. They passionately participate in the virtual loops. Fiercely maintain their avatars, so they can prove their self-worth to others. For these folks. Social media is more than a way of living. It’s life itself. As if the real world is just some deserted place used only as decor for their virtual identities.

The other camp we can portray as the lords of the towns. The folks who are using social media in a very deliberate matter. Namely, to capture the attention of the online citizens. But they don’t do it primarily to help people. They use “helping” and “resourcefulness” as a tool to sell more of their “proven” methods. They say the right things in the right way. Presenting themselves as semi-gods. Using the right pictures and heavily distributing propaganda to create a bigger audience of flawed viewers looking for solutions to their personal problems with the ultimate goal to tap into their wallets.

But there is also a third camp.

The ones who don’t see social media as an escape from reality. They don’t feel the need to prove to others their worthiness by deliberately making their apartments look better than they are. They simply see it as a tool that can be used for their own creative endeavors. Like a hammer sitting inside your toolbox when something needs banging.

If you’re tired of this itchy feeling. The constant urge to plug your brain into the endless feed of memes and status updates.

But if you’re somehow unable to escape the pull towards the virtual oasis. This manual will serve as an aid.

A companion that will reveal a secret that sits deep in the dark corridor of your unconsciousness. Help you understand that you’re endlessly refreshing your feed till your battery dies, not to find new content online because you are bored. But to find something new to diverge you from your real problems offline.

In this guide, my goal is to help you stop using social media emotionally and start using it rationally.

Introduction

A couple of years ago, in 2018, I made a drastic decision.