David Beck: My toxic relationship with social media is over

I'm reducing my social media use and it feels great. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion:
Arguing online is like playing chess against a pigeon - even if you win, the bird will kick all the pieces over and crap on the board.

I have very few interactions on social media that leave me feeling happy or fulfilled, yet I find myself constantly opening the apps up on my phone to make sure I haven't missed anything.

Aside from staying in touch with people, I don't see many benefits. I end up comparing my reality with the few highlights other people post and it leaves me feeling down and unworthy.

I see posts and comments from people cutting each other down, all desperate to make a point and not consider anyone else's. It can be a truly toxic environment. Twitter in particular seems to be a group of angry, opinionated people oblivious to others' opinions, just screaming into the abyss.

Social media is also the arch-nemesis of productivity, not just at work but in life. I want to do more stretching and mobility work, I want to build a vegetable garden and I want to read more, but more often than not I spend hours beaming the bright light of my phone straight into my irises.

In summary; social media does not make me feel good and it stops me from doing things that will.

It's time for a change.

In recent weeks I have deleted the Twitter and Facebook apps off my phone. I use Facebook for work, but restrict my use to when I am at work and for work-related activities.

Twitter is such a life-suck for me that I had no issues dropping it and have not missed it at all.

I've kept Instagram but culled the number of pages I follow from about 700 to 99. My feed is now restricted to updates from close friends and family, fitness, health, and wellbeing pages. I can't scroll for long without running out of content and when I'm finished I feel more positive about the interaction.

I feel really good, like I have started to kick an addiction. It's important to remember these apps are made to suck us in. Complex algorithms construct our feeds to show us as many things as possible that will make us stay online.

We don't have to let that control us. Generations of humans survived without social media before us and had fewer mental health issues to boot.