Reclaiming My Time on the Internet

in some ways more than others

I came of age on the internet. Specifically, I came of age on an Instagram account that has, at varying points, had thousands of viewers. Whether my coming of age waited until this moment because of growing up in small towns or because of spending most of my youth fighting mysterious illnesses, I can’t be certain. What I’m sure of, though, is that I’ve spent much of this year contemplating what it means to have spent my growing years, my identity forming years, doing so very publicly online and how I can reclaim some of the time I’ve spent doing so. 

When I went from a granddaughter to a caregiver to a mourner, I lost interest in the internet. I lost interest in life, too. In existence. The world without my grandparents felt deeply cold, gray, and uninteresting. Some days it still does. To Instagram while wanting to die is not something I was interested in performing, so for the first time in years, I deleted the app and stepped away for large expanses of time. I let the compulsive need to share the intimate moments of my life fade. For years, I had witnessed reminders that “you don’t owe the internet anything!” It took living the worst months of my life for me to embrace the sentiment. If I couldn’t bring them back from the dead or join them, it felt like I finally owed no one anything. In this way, grief has grounded me. 

In the beginning, sharing the harder pieces of myself on the internet felt like sticking my hand out an open car window, letting the thoughts out with a rush of summer air. I poured my heart out to Instagram, and in return, I built friendships, community, and a greater sense of identity. So much of the past four years has been beautiful and freeing, but there’s something terrifying about coming of age, and existing in general, on the internet, for all to see. 

The signifier “coming of age” when written in a plot summary often comes with words like “messy” and “flawed.” Those words could also, I think, apply easily to my journey through social media. I feel almost entirely separate from the person who started the account. I think often of the girl I was. Bleach blonde hair, filled in eyebrows. Cluelessly straight. Not disabled, just chronically ill, chronically in pain. At first, I didn’t cry at all. Then, came an opening of the floodgates and a highlight of crying videos. I developed taste, came out, changed my hair (and pronouns and clothes and home.) I kept crying. I started calling myself disabled. I stopping shying away from Disability Justice, and I learned about accessibility and ranted about captions and masks. I turned 21 in the middle of a pandemic, alone. There were tipsy DIY bartending live streams with people I later lost touch with. There were so many posts begging to be seen, to be held, virtually if not in person. 

When I think about all of the things I’ve shared with the internet, I start to panic. Vulnerability, I have learned, comes with a cost. Sometimes it’s just a belated cringe at the books I used to love, thoughtlessly and without critical thinking, or the way I used to stage and edit photos. Other times, it’s worrying that I’ve said too much, shared too much, shown the ugly, tender parts of my heart that refuse to fit into an aesthetic - and maybe shouldn’t. 

Sometimes that cost is an important one. Advocacy is a raw, personal thing. Writing, for me, is important and intimate, always. To pay the price of vulnerability also means receiving in return the feelings of being heard, of changing minds, of creating a space in which people can grow - messily - together. While talking about the anxieties I have about my time on the internet with a friend earlier this year, she reminded me that it’s meant giving others a space to feel less alone in the world. To a certain extent, that makes my occasional discomfort worth it. 

It is impossible to write about social media and the impact it’s had on my life without acknowledging the unique role it has within the disability community. I think often of the nurse whose water bottle had a sticker proclaiming that my Google search didn’t compare to her nursing degree. Formal education, while vastly different than scouring the internet for answers, is not the only valid form of obtaining new information. Disabled and chronically ill people - particularly women - have been discounted and invalidated by medical professionals for their symptoms to an extent that the internet, whether it be Google or Instagram or chat boards, is more useful than hospital visits. Instagram has provided me with more than just solidarity. It has become a space where people I’ve never met in person share tips for everything from obtaining a rare diagnosis to fighting fatigue and setting up an office in a more accessible way (a wireless keyboard and mouse have been immensely helpful!) Though social media can be a space that causes me anxiety, it is also undoubtedly life saving and affirming for the disability community. 

Ultimately, 2023 was the year I learned to loosen the chokehold of Instagram without ridding myself of it entirely. The vulnerability I had believed was essential to my advocacy was reserved for myself. I let days stretch by without posting. I set a time limit on the app. I read books I never talked about on the internet, and I stopped viewing every unfollow as a personal failure. There are, life has forced me to realize, much more important things. 

Simultaneously, I developed a TikTok fixation. TikTok was everything Instagram wasn’t. It required complete sensory focus: eyes and ears and brain, while necessitating no emotional output. For years, social media had been a game, an unpaid job, and a passion project. With TikTok, it was just brain candy. I could scroll for hours on end and dissociate. I didn’t have to think about dead grandparents or being laid off or how lonely I was. Instead, I could watch edits of queer soccer players that were probably made by a 13 year old. I could leave a video playing while I cooked or cleaned, letting a stranger’s voice take the place of a friend’s. The world stopped existing while my algorithm fed me content perfectly catered to make my depression ridden brain produce hits of dopamine. 

Every couple days, I would delete the app. I never wanted to be hooked to scrolling. I knew it was a waste of my time, and the amount of time I spent staring at my phone’s screen hurt my hands, my head, and my attention span. Still, the second I was left alone with my thoughts, I found myself drifting back to the app store. It’s absurd, writing it down this way, but it’s the truth. TikTok was a terribly unhealthy coping mechanism, and I’ve finally deleted it for good. 

I’ve had TikTok deleted for a week or two, maybe. It isn’t a long time, but I’ve already started reaching for books more often when I have a free moment. Now that I’ve started school, I know the majority of what was once free scrolling time will be devoted to studying, but it’s freeing to continue reclaiming my time. I love the community I’ve found on Instagram. There are so many people I’ve connected with in that space who challenge, encourage, and enrich me. I’m so grateful for the voice I have, and I love recommending books and squealing about soccer and being a big, silly nerd. Those things won’t change. I just need to keep spending more time living outside of social media, feeling more like a person and less like a profile. 

Tips for Limiting Screen Time (from a certifiable work in progress:)

- Set time limits on your problem apps. This may work, and it may not! I set a limit on TikTok and never once obeyed it. That was one of the signs that I needed to take a step further. While I don’t always abide by my one hour Instagram limit, it’s been a helpful reminder to put my phone down and pick up a book. 

- Find an accountability buddy! If a friend hadn’t mutually decided to ditch TikTok with me, I probably would’ve spent the last week tempted to scroll rather than study. 

- Commit to spending one day a week offline. I used to spend weekends completely free from social media - deleting the apps from my phone and re-downloading at the beginning of the week. This is a practice I plan to start again! It can be one day, two, more. The choice is yours.

- Can’t delete an app because of work or not wanting your drafts to be deleted? Move it to a new page on your phone. Out of sight, out of mind. 

- Pay attention to why you’re picking up your phone and scrolling. Is it avoidance? Dissociation? Anxiety? Delaying a task? Consider your reasons and if they’re good ones. Maybe chat about it in therapy, in a journal, or with your pals!

- Give yourself some grace. Being alone with your thoughts can be scary. Sometimes dissociation is the only way you can cope in the moment. Exist, in whatever way you can, at any particular moment. I’ll never judge you for a high screen time, and you shouldn’t either. 

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