A Brief History of My Social Media Use Part 6: Present Day

There’s been a plot twist.

Photo by Cottonbro Studio on Pexels

Three months ago, in a moment of disgust with social media, I started this series to document my history with social media and where things went awry and I stopped enjoying it — and to see if I could somehow get my previous enjoyment back.

I began by looking back at the early halcyon days of social media — going all the way back to MySpace and even Friendster — when these new innovations were so exciting and offered so much promise. Then I took a look at how social media began to lose its sheen when the phenomenon known as “compare and despair” started to seep in.

That was followed by my cancer diagnosis, which transformed my ambivalence to enjoyment once again, as I found that I could use social media to document my experiences during and after treatment, connect with other cancer survivors worldwide, find a sense of purpose and fulfillment, and help others in the process.

Then, during the pandemic, social media became invaluable; it was my entire social life during lockdown and for a long time afterward, and a much-needed creative outlet. But that social media utopia didn’t last forever, and eventually the dark side crept in: rampant antisemitism, hatred, and divisiveness came to the forefront, followed closely by the emergence of influencers portraying cancer with a glamorous, luxury aesthetic, all fueled by Meta’s self-serving and money-hungry business practices.

Which brings us to the present day — and my final (for now) post in this series. When I embarked on this experiment, I seriously doubted that I would ever regain any of my previous enjoyment of social media. But in the past month, there’s been a plot twist.