What do you want in life?
For the longest time, my answer to this question, in all its profundity, has been “happiness and peace.” In my search to find the road to these two, I discovered that one of the most largely accepted beliefs in the world related to this is that both happiness and peace are in the mind. That happiness and peace, or a lack of these, is a state of our mind.
In my life, though, the terms of happiness were being dictated to a significant extent by social media apps; in what seemed like a puppet-puppeteer connection, almost. Instagram made me believe that my happiness lied in being photographed on the giant swing overlooking the lush paddy fields in Ubud, Bali. My accomplishments (which includes travel and eating out, somehow!!) mattered only if they garnered at least a hundred “likes” on Facebook. Sometimes, “JUST” ONE HUNDRED felt less. Google, on the other hand, held the power to throw me off my perceived state of elation with its barrage of breaking news. And breaking news is seldom happy!
While I wanted to believe that my happiness lied within me, I did not feel so. With time, I learned that the mind only processed what was fed to it and gave compounded returns. And often, during the time I spent on social media, I fed the mind with feelings of want, lack, and inferiority of varying degrees. It would be interesting to bring out here that none of these emotions manifested in my life off the virtual space, but if only anyone could see the mess that spread over my mind!!!! And so, I went the minimalist way. The noise inside the head has been much less ever since.
Mobile Apps and Notifications
Notifications of all kinds from all Apps on my phone are disabled. The only time my phone rings during a day is when I get a call or when the alarm goes off in the morning. The urge to check WhatsApp or access YouTube or Google News because there is something on them breaking the internet and reshaping the future of the world every five minutes is gone. I read WhatsApp messages only when I choose to do so.
Any app which I can go without using for more than a week is not installed on my phone. It can always be re-installed if needed. Any app which offers its services equally well through its website, like Facebook, Goodreads, Udemy etc., is not installed on my phone either. Less clutter, lesser distraction.
The first thing I do when I am added to a WhatsApp group is – exit it. 🙂 As I inch closer to turning 30, I am dawned upon by the wisdom that messaging on WhatsApp by no means equates to keeping in touch. It surprises me now that once upon a time I thought it did. I choose to deeply nurture the few close bonds I cherish than have a hundred people to ask, “What’s up?” and get an “nm” in reply or do so myself! 😛
I delete WhatsApp chats as soon as the conversation is over. I don’t want to give myself the time to dwell in the past when there is so much to look forward to.
Most importantly, the auto-download option for photos and videos on WhatsApp is disabled. Mindless insensitive humour, of many other things, is the last thing I want for my mind to consume.
News Apps
I don’t have News apps on my phone. Not even the ones that update you with world events in just 100 words or 30 seconds. I am okay not being up-to-date like that. There are a lot of people in my life, besides journalists, eager to break important news to me. 🙂 I’d rather go through meaningful content, at a time of my choosing, and let my mind fully understand and make sense of it, than overload it with “copy-pasted opinions.”
At one point, I customised my Google News feed to suit my interests. But we all know Google always has the controls on this flight. You take-off with a breaking news notification, smoothly maneuvering over subjects of your liking. And before you know it, you have spiralled through sports and political news, national and international affairs, affairs of the royal family even, and affairs of celebrities just as importantly as their airport and gym looks, ten ways to get rich, get more beautiful, lose weight, and lose your mind in less than ten days, before crash landing on the realisation that you have wasted the most productive hours of the day. My web browser now opens to a blank page.
Instagram was that platform in my life which gave maximum information per scroll. One moment, I found my calling in being a traveller/ travel blogger, and the very next moment I realized that my happiness lied in hoarding silver jewellery. While I have been an aspiring minimalist for quite some time now for all the right reasons in my head, the perfectly framed pictures of travel, home decor, fashion, and food on Instagram, on several occasions, convinced me that I wasn’t doing or being enough. It made me “need” things in my life that I did not even know existed until a moment ago.
One fine December evening last year, while simply scrolling through Instagram like I did every day, I permanently deleted my (fairly well-subscribed) Instagram account. Life has not been the same ever since.
Funnily, I am back with two Instagram accounts this time around, but with a promise to be more responsible, and not random, in not just uploading content, but also receiving it.
Perhaps, the most lethal combination available on the internet today – of news and people’s feeds. To avoid information overload, I have unfollowed/ unliked all the pages on Facebook, pages that had relevance in my life 10 years ago, but add no value to it today. My Facebook account remains deactivated for the better part of the year. I login once every 2-3 months to a blank wall/feed, go through my friends’ list, update myself on my friends’ Facebook lives to my heart’s content, and deactivate my account again. Sound crazy, but it helps sanity! 🙂
Digital Well-being
Fortunate that my phone comes with a Digital Well-being feature in which it turns to grayscale and goes into the Do Not Disturb mode from 9.30 p.m every day till 7 a.m the next day. I keep my phone on Focus Mode or Work Mode through most of the day under which I have access to only five apps including phone, camera, a music app, and two reading apps. The phone also has an App timer which disables Instagram, YouTube, Netflix after 15 minutes of use, and WhatsApp after 30 minutes every day. Phew. Self-control? That is a work in progress. It has been for a very long time now, haha. Therefore, using technology to counter technology. 🙂
Now, before you think I have been a compulsive obsessive social media junkie, I would like to clarify that that has not been the case. All these emotions that I have talked about were mostly fleeting. But we tend to open ourselves to so many different channels of receiving signals that evoke such emotions, that it causes not just information overload, but also emotional short-circuit at times.
What it has meant to keep away from social media and the internet in general? More reading time, more quality time with family, more gratitude for what I already have, finally starting to work on this blog, more focus on ideas, and collective growth rather than acquiring more things as defining factors of success and prosperity.
I would love to know how you have been wading through the waves of social media, and its high tides as well as the undercurrents? 🙂
Indian Minimalists 
Leave a comment