Bless me Medium, for I’ve been unSeen
It has been 24 hours since my last social media use.
(And it might be for good this time.)
An old memory popped into my Facebook feed recently, and I realized that I’ve been an active user on that platform for 20 years now, which sent me on a bit of a spiral! I was a Junior at UC Davis when Facebook rolled out, originally for university students exclusively. I was 18 at the time, which means I’ve been a consumer of social media for my entire adult life.
Originally, it seemed to offer everything I was looking for. As I’ve written about before, I was homeschooled my entire childhood, and my first two years at community college wasn’t much more than extension of that, as my ultra conservative, fundamentalist Christian parents kept a tight leash on me. University meant freedom, and the possibility of actually making some friends!
I’m sure this doesn’t apply to everyone, but for me, social media promised me a fast way to fill the very deep and painful void I had been feeling my whole life- I had no friends, and I really wanted that to change. No worries! Half of my classmates were now on this exciting new platform. MySpace was fun, but the exclusivity and clean feel of Facebook made it attractive to the college crowd that I desperately wanted to be a part of, and we were all eager see our “Friends” number…
