It's been about 2 years since I left social media and I've recently I've come to terms with being removed from it all.

To clarify, I still follow the news. I check it everyday, sometimes more then once a day. But I'm removed from the updates of my former acquaintances. As a result, catching up with friends who still use social media sometimes leads to drops of info that I had missed. For example I found out a few people from my highschool had gotten married or have had children and have been posting about it for the better part of a year. Or sometimes we talk about how someone we knew had moved to a different country.

Most of these things don't change my day to day life, if a close friend of mine were to get engaged or move abroad they would let me know personally. But it makes me realize how much personal information spreads as a result of social media. If no one had social media, I would most likely never hear about people who I went to highschool with again. Yet I still hear about small updates from their lives, despite me not having any form of connection with them.

Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. If you post publicly on social media there is at least some desire to share an update with everyone. The idea of a 'close friends' story on instagram allows you to to share with a selected few. If you wanted your personal update to be private you could just use that. It's not surprising that the reach of a 'big update' is fairly wide.

But there's a sense of pressure that arises from being constantly exposed to updates from others. The more you see others share, the more you feel like it's expected, and as a result, there's a constant cycle of documenting every positive thing you do for everyone to see.

Since I don't use social media, most people don't really know what's going on in my life. When I travel I don't post about it and only a handful of people know. My education and career history is readily available on linkedin for those who wish to seek it out, but my other personal information is generally contained. As a result I'm also mostly removed from other people's lives as well.