I used to have a Facebook profile back when I was at university.

For me, it’s just one big forum of upmanship – the impression I got was of people trying to out-do each other with photos and details of their lives, trying to tell everybody else how much fun a person is having, how they are going to all the parties, what they have etc. Needing validation from other people about these things, and chasing status with their statuses!

And it is very hypocritical of me to criticize all of the above-mentioned because I was guilty of the exact same thing too. At school I felt inferior to my classmates (I was bullied) but when I signed up to Facebook many years later I started adding my old classmates to my friends list (or they found me) – I got a lot of photo comments from them saying things like “OMG You’ve changed so much you look so cool now!” – I felt validated and it felt good to not feel like the person they had made me feel like back at school. It almost turned into an addiction – trying to out-do other people, trying to find acceptance and worth with how many likes my post had. Looking back now, I just looked and came across like a complete idiot.

But most of the time I was always worried about people leaving mean comments on my photos or my wall – this feeling of dread got worse when I didn’t log in for at least a week. Thoughts of “Oh no, somebody is probably leaving really horrible things on my wall” or “Oh no, somebody has probably uploaded the photos from when I was drunk the other night and I looked like an absolute prat” or “Oh no, I’m never going to get the job I applied for because they have probably looked me up on Facebook and saw my posts and photos of me being stupid…”

Facebook probably does have it’s uses – you can stay in touch with people you are unable to see regularly in real life but besides this, I think it’s making people more antisocial. People don’t talk in real life or ask how we are doing because we already know, thanks to their Facebook status. But most of the time it used to annoy me when somebody on my friends list who I had never even spoken to in real life used to post how much she couldn’t wait to watch some silly reality TV show, or when my old housemates used to congregate in the living room with their laptops just talking about what people have posted. It’s also very easy for people to cyber-bully and target somebody with abuse (I saw this quite a lot online at uni) and I think shaming and abusing somebody online when other people can read all about it is low and disgusting.

Long story short, I deleted my account. I feel so much better for it. I will probably sign up again soon because I need to promote my artwork but I’m not doing personal social media again. No thanks!