The Importance of Taking Things Offline: A Personal Commentary on the State of Social Media in 2025

Qaspeq by Anecia Natalia Tugatuk, Yup’ik, from Aleknagik. Mini cedar paddle earrings by Robert Peele, Haida, from Hydaburg.

I was diagnosed with inattentive-type attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in 2022, either on or around my parents’ wedding anniversary date of September 22. I’ve come to understand my condition as a dopamine deficiency, amping up my senses to feel everything more intensely. A resulting built-in perk of my condition is a brain that won’t stop. Because of non-stop mental and emotional processing, I’m left in a near-constant state of burnout. The “hyperactivity” part of ADHD is misleading, because it’s my brain that is “hyper,” not my body. Some days I’m lucky if I get out of bed. But even on days that I don’t, I’m still always doing – planning, watching, listening to, researching – something.  

Three birthdays after my diagnosis, I now spend my lunch breaks letting our family’s two shih tzus outside, bringing those dogs back in, and spot-cleaning around the downstairs of my family’s house. I haven't had a house of my own to clean since I rented a studio apartment in midtown Anchorage from 2016 to 2017. What started as a chance at independence took no time to become near-destructive self-indulgence that would continue until damaging my car in 2018 led me to stop drinking alcohol – completely, at first, which I would then relax to not-drinking by default but also “not drinking to completion” after accidentally drinking a green-tea shot at a restaurant in Boston in 2022. 

Boston remains the furthest I’ve traveled from home. One of the few documented memories I have from that trip is a slow-motion hotel-bathroom video of a backward flip of my hair that was chin-length at the time. Now, my hair reaches past my elbows, something I didn’t think I’d ever live to see. In 2019 I changed jobs to something that required less physical movement and is, to this day, conveniently located near a DQ that for a time sold lunches complete with ice cream at dangerously affordable prices. Those 40 pounds I gained in that first year as a result, I have also since lost again – yet my shirt size somehow remains unchanged.

A recurring question I’ve asked myself since my ADHD diagnosis has been, how much of my experience is just being a person? There is something to be said about feeling something so deeply that you know you can’t be alone in feeling it. Maybe I am padding my own fallibility from the nuance of individual reality, but I would venture to say that the prospect of a legacy – personal, family, or otherwise – is not an uncommon concern that people have.

One day in 2017, my family and I had a meeting to catch up and check in with each other. The youngest of us was college-age at the time, so we all had our own goings-on even then. It had been a long time coming and wasn’t the first time it had come up, but the conversation somehow came to whether I, a man, liked men. It was ultimately a supportive moment, but rather than admitting the truth myself, I was asked and I gave in and answered quietly. In 2021, I posted two writings where I publicly came out as queer: one through a metaphor about painting my nails, and then another demystifying that metaphor. So far in life I’ve only been comfortable giving passive admissions because I have yet to comfortably master assertiveness.

Unbeknownst to my family at the time, 2017 also marked the year of discovering my own non-binary gender identity. Somehow despite re-sharing extensive content on Tumblr about the gender spectrum, it took me years to realize that I might have settled into feeling like a failure “as a man” because I wasn’t a man. This realization brought me immeasurable relief, and led me to change my pronouns on social media to include they/them – to minimal fanfare, a quiet soft-launch until 2023.

One day in 2023 I decided to join my dad to pick up my mom from her office. On the way home, she asked me if I saw the post she shared about two-spirit people in Alaska native tribes – including Yup’ik, Alutiiq, and Sugpiaq, the tribes from both sides of my family. She read it herself, complete with cited published sources, and must’ve decided that it sounded like a certain second child that she birthed (me).

The term “non-binary” likely didn’t enter my mom’s vocabulary until after she found and shared that post – specifically, the day my older brother mentioned the non-binary label, likely because of someone that he met at or through work, or reading and research of his own. He must’ve caught onto my pronoun-change soft-launch at some point because he started subtly and respectfully using my pronouns and referring to me as his sibling not too long before. That conversation was when my mom casually asked me, “are you non-binary?” To which I replied, basically! Then I reminded her of the article-post she shared. “That’s right! You’re two-spirit.”

From what I’ve read about two-spirit identities, some indigenous tribes only recognize or adopt them if the “label” is given to them by an elder. In this case, my mom was the elder that bestowed this label upon me in an official sense. However, I maintain that I will always be my parents’ baby boy (especially my mom’s!), and I will always be my siblings’ brother. I’ll also always be my aunts’ and uncles’ nephew, and my cousins’ cousin. We all share cultural backgrounds that value family; these people have known me for all my life, and some I’ve known for all of theirs. At this point, there is probably nothing left that I can do that will surprise anyone. Almost nothing.

This past October, I told my parents about my aspirations to perform in drag – exposing my enduring interest in makeup, an interest that dates back to the “emo and scene” wave of the mid-2000s – as well as my vision to design and create a drag garment that one of my sisters might be able to wear as a wedding dress. After coming out as gay in 2017, as queer in 2021, as two-spirit (“arnaruaq” in Yup’ik) in 2023, and then as a drag enthusiast and potentially an aspiring drag artist in 2024, I really have nothing left to hide from anyone, least of all my parents – especially at the gilded and hickory-smoked age of 36, where most people would openly and enthusiastically do what they want anyway. So why do I insist on isolating myself so intensely?

I split most of my time between work and home. Twice a week I play the french horn in band rehearsals, and I might go out to drag shows and comedy showcases twice a month. Otherwise, I took my first solo trip out of state when I went to Seattle in 2012 and have averaged one trip every other year since then: Los Angeles and Pomona in 2014, a cross-country road trip with my best friend from college in 2016, and Chicago in 2018. I and most people stayed home in 2020, but I made it to Boston twice in 2022. 2024 brought me to Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia two weeks before I got to visit Chicago again and then take a train to Milwaukee. I would do it all again if I could, but I need 2025 to be a year of recovery for me.

In 2020 I resolved to journal more in place of taking to social media – where I used to vent, solicit opinions, build my own case by leading my audiences, and then give what I thought were ineffective follow-ups. It only took a few years for journaling to stick, but I feel like I’ve gotten comfortable with talking myself through things without first seeking validation from other people – and in a place where I couldn’t potentially annoy anyone or bring their day down just by talking myself through my feelings.

I am my own biggest fan. That isn’t saying much considering how much of my writing or myself in general that I actually (don’t) share with anyone. In my last journal, I frequently addressed my past self and my future self, especially through the scope of re-reading old entries – vain, maybe, but also forgetful. Most people write to remember; and I do, but I also journal most things out of my head to free up hard-drive space.

I call myself a victim of hard opinions and laughably naive ideals with little to no understanding of why I have them. I also feel that I lack execution and facility to express these opinions both reasonably and in full, especially when asked. I have even found a way to get spoken over through email! I know that I deserve to be heard and seen, but I’ve also come to learn that not everything needs to be shown or said. Thoughts, feelings, and memories are fleeting. Even written words on paper are temporary, but the internet and social media are forever – or at least longer-lasting and more accessible than physical media.

The last journal I kept, I kept from 2020 to 2024. With less than 20 pages left, it might be the closest I’ve been to filling a journal to completion. Having started writing in a new journal, I might still go back to try to wrap up whatever my last entries might have been about. In my journaling I sometimes lapse into the point of view of another person happening upon these journals of mine, decades into the future – years-long snapshots of the past, informed by my own lived experiences, in the form of a handwritten novel with no consistent plot. What are my experiences but history on a personal level? Is this my legacy?

I find it hard to critique social media without also criticizing politics given today’s socio-political climate and current events. There is also little that I can say about anything that Bo Burnham hasn’t already covered in his 2021 musical special, “Inside”. But as famed drag artist Willam Belli once said: “there are no new ideas.” Similar to how nothing matters in nihilism, I believe that shoes or accessories that “go with nothing” really go with everything. For as long as I’ve been writing these writings, I’ve felt too under-informed, under-qualified, etc. to publicly express a relevant recorded opinion about anything. Having lived to see a second presidency under Donald Trump, however, has shown me that this shouldn’t stop anyone else.

Thus far into my mid-thirties I’ve been able to exist relatively freely, especially online and after learning so much about myself and opening the door to continue learning. It is, however, becoming harder to exist as freely. The few years surrounding the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling of 2015 instating same-sex marriage are becoming an increasingly-distant memory and a time that at this point I’m probably not alone in feeling like I took for granted. While that ruling went on untouched (from what I remember) during Trump’s first presidency, US conservatives came out of the woodwork on a scale I didn’t see before, especially about why they supported him or his presidency.

Periodically throughout the time that I kept my last journal, I would allude to starting a writing project that I called “the importance of taking things offline.” Generally my inclination is to persevere, “liking” something (social media, in this case) that no one else likes until I find reasons to dislike it myself. 

I used to be on the side of social media in “the war on social media” because of the steady stream of dopamine that came with connecting and interacting with people, and crafting and consuming posts. But the longer I’m in it and on it, the more I see myself treating it like a job or serious obligation – which it isn’t for me, or it feels like it shouldn’t be. It has already stopped being as much fun, and staying informed about current events now hardly feels worth the burnout, from current events to bad takes on current events, and even to the ads that now break up these events and takes.

Within the past few years, I noticed an apparent trend on YouTube where big-name content creators would release videos about “quitting YouTube.” In the few that I remember seeing, creators cited physical and emotional burnout as part of their reason for stopping or stepping back from full-time content creation. The trend here was that these videos would come from these creators right around the time they reached their tenth anniversary of full-time content creation. Similarly, I think I might’ve met my “10-year mark” with social media, even though it’s been more and longer than that.

The internet first came to my hometown of Dillingham, Alaska in the late ‘90s, after I had already been on computers since kindergarten in 1994. After the internet came to Dillingham, I have distinct memories of waiting for my turn to play on the computers in the back of my fifth-grade classroom while everyone else went outside for recess. I went to “computer camp” twice in middle school to take keyboarding classes, my developing typing speed likely being further aided by the piano lessons I was taking. Before social media came email, the proto-social media. I got my first two email addresses just before the Y2K scare happened. My first social media platform would then go on to be MySpace.

The novelty of something like MySpace meant you could stay connected with people without waiting on a phone call or a letter – especially following the advent of SMS text messaging, which didn’t come to Dillingham until the late 2000s to early 2010s. This was when your Nokia-style brick or Motorola RAZR flip-phone couldn’t connect to the internet or send pictures without paying a premium, whether with money or time spent waiting for things to load. In addition to the novelty of staying connected, we also got profiles: representations of ourselves as we wanted others to see us. 

After MySpace came Facebook, which I was luckily able to create an account using a regular email address. Signing up used to require a college email address because Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook as a college student that wanted to share his own local version of Hot or Not with his friends. After Facebook came Instagram, a “pictures-only” version of Facebook. Then came a short-form, “text-only” platform called Twitter, and a short-form video platform called Vine.

Then came Snapchat. Why text pictures to friends when you can send them through another app? Especially now that you don’t need to give out your phone number! With this app, you could send someone (or multiple people) a picture or video that disappears, using filters and maintaining snap-streaks. In 2018, Snapchat ran an ad that asked, “would you rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown?” mocking Rihanna and other victims of domestic abuse. Robyn Rihanna Fenty then urged everyone to “throw the whole app away,” and a majority of people listened. I and my thousand-day streaks, unfortunately, did not.

Had I not Google-searched something one day in 2011, I would not have joined Tumblr – nor would I have learned that GIFs existed, combining the functions of pictures and videos. Had I not joined Tumblr, a public platform like Instagram or Twitter where you follow people instead of sending friend requests, I wouldn’t have made some of the friends from everywhere that I’m still in touch with today. Before long, Tumblr became little more than another place to share and reshare the same content among followers that followed each other back, or “mutuals” for short.

The short-form content platform Musically then emerged, eventually merging with TikTok under the ownership of ByteDance. With this merger, users lip-syncing to music expanded to general short-form content, picking up the slack left from when Vine was discontinued. I personally joined TikTok somewhere in 2018-19 to watch and send videos to my friends. The COVID-19 pandemic then made its way to Alaska, and on St. Patrick’s Day of 2020, my job gave everyone hands-on demonstrations and training with software that would allow us to work remotely because we would be required to start the next day.

2020 marked seven years since the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown started the Black Lives Matter movement. Protests then erupted again that spring following the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. TikTok, and social media in general, became a powerful tool for activists to organize and broadcast demonstrations, as well as to share general reports of news – political news, especially – without the biases of major networks. The government picked up on this and decided that spying on people is only okay when we (they) do it.

In 2023 there was a bill introduced outlining cyber-surveillance by the government. The only time I mentioned this in previous journal entries, I didn’t elaborate on this bill at all – and there is likely more than one bill about this in circulation. But the Friday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of 2025, the US Supreme Court ruled to ban TikTok, citing security risks specifically with China.

This is not the first time we were threatened with a government TikTok ban, but this is the first one that actually stuck. This ruling gave ByteDance two days to transfer ownership of TikTok to a corporation based in America, without which the ban would take effect. In the 19 hours that it was banned – and then miraculously un-banned, oddly thanks to a president that hadn’t even taken office yet, and by the same person that wanted to ban it in the first place – I decided that I was over the unconfirmed back-and-forth on whether the ban was happening at all. After deleting my TikTok account, I realized that I just deleted a social media account for the first time in years. If I did this, it can’t be that much harder to delete more, right?

Interpersonal connection, I think, was at least one of the biggest initial draws to social media. This is realized today largely through memes, hallmarks of relatability where we tell our own stories through other people’s stories. With the addition of news networks’ presence on social media, I would call social media a collective compendium of history being documented in real time – along with how that history affects our lives and impacts how we connect with people.

Connection with other people can also be facilitated through personality inventories like what western “astrology” has become today – horoscopes and readings from likely accurate but intensely aesthetic apps like Co-Star and Sanctuary, and memes from astrology-themed meme accounts. One reality that keeps me from further subscribing to this version of astrology is that interpersonal interaction cannot be substituted with things like compatibility readings – especially based on sun signs alone. Similarly, connecting with people cannot be replaced with social media. 

MySpace rebranded to primarily showcase music and musicians after I left the platform. Facebook and Instagram over time have remained unchanged aside from added features like stories. Tumblr changed ownership in 2018. At some point, Donald Trump felt personally victimized enough by the user base on Twitter to start his own platform, Truth Social. Twitter was then acquired by Elon Musk, which he renamed to X. Parler, Gab, Mastodon and Bluesky then became available X alternatives. Upon the heels of the TikTok ban, alternative short-form platforms like Lemon8 and Xiaohongshu/RedNote emerged. As of today I have profiles on Facebook, Instagram, X, Tumblr, Snapchat, and now Bluesky. Now, with my personal history and codependent relationship with using social media, I don’t have it in me to join another platform.

There is no shortage of platforms to choose from or keep track of. Each platform comes with its own range of uses, but no one uses any platform in the same way. Where the freedom of opinions is part and parcel of free speech, “free speech” on social media is also subject to what are called community guidelines. Despite my exhaustion and desire for change, I know that my existence online is further solidified each time I open and use an app. With each post to a platform, I am subject to that platform’s guidelines, which are devised and enforced (however inconsistently) by the entities running these platforms. For example, Meta – the company behind Facebook and Instagram – recently updated their community guidelines to allow anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech, setting a precedent for other platforms to do the same if they haven’t already.

Presence and style on social media are not always accurate representations of communication skills. My own skills and whether they’re “good” or not are subjective and not for me to decide. I have my own preconceived notions about people and how they navigate the internet, and online behavior translating to behavior offline is one of them. But I believe that open-mindedness should be at the forefront of things more people should strive for, lest we be seen as close-minded as the heteronormative society that closes their minds to us – or to me, at least.

If not for interpersonal connection, platforms can be used for reviewing and helping sell products or services. Over time, content creators would gain enough followers and traction to bring the term “monetization” into the mainstream vernacular. News networks and other major brands and businesses would also develop their presences on all platforms – and then came ads. TV commercials and radio ads like the ones I grew up with are still around, but now they’re everywhere. If not as a standalone ad, they’re in the middle of a podcast or YouTube video where the creator takes a moment to thank the sponsor(s) of that podcast or video.

Created content today also wouldn’t feel complete without mentioning “The Algorithm”. From what I gather, this is the magic behind “recommended” content. More specifically, I understand it to be proprietary coding exclusive to each platform, intended to intuitively showcase these personalized recommendations. If not songs on Spotify or videos on YouTube, it’s a general sense of which order you might see posts in on a news feed.

We don’t have as much of a choice as we might think in how we make our platforms work for us. “The Algorithm” is another reason why major content creators often struggle to the point of leaving a platform. Whether what they create reaches the right people isn’t completely within their control. Yet despite this, people continue to create – the standards to which audiences hold them becoming higher as filming and editing technologies evolve. Factor in the innovation of creating anything that hasn’t been created already, and it’s no surprise why creators burn out over time.

The overall experience with social media is a visualization of the offline human experience. On social media, we connect with people, we express ourselves, we receive and respond to news, and we plan our next purchase. At best, we might find content that hasn’t been published in popular media – cinema-quality videos, major publication-worthy writings, food recipes that could win awards – reminders that people are wonderful because of what we can do, that life isn’t just bad times from which we need to recover, and that we are not alone.

At worst, social media has been reduced to echo chambers, especially from the standpoint of political leanings and reacting to news. Is finding “your people” not also finding echo chambers? The human experience doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The oracle of “The Algorithm” might control when we see what, but all it takes is one recommended post for anyone to learn something new, especially about themselves. Creators bemoan their content making it to “the wrong side” of a platform and having their viewpoints challenged, but the viewpoints of the people interacting from “the wrong side” are also being challenged themselves. 

Still, I tend to gloss over ads as much as I do over content about “The Algorithm” or about engagement because I gain nothing from being guilted into subscribing or following, or from hearing complaining about low numbers. I respect the hustle and effort behind content creation; I appreciate transparency, and I understand how beneficial it can be to quantify and visualize the support of friends and followers. There is just something to be said about creating content for the right reasons, and that anything about analytics alone feels like nothing I should see.

I have documented times where I would first wish people would take their problems with me directly to me, but then proceed to talk about issues I had with someone, with everyone but the person in question. I have also martyred myself across social media platforms because I couldn’t remember who to keep updated, and I never stopped to think who would care. Aggregators do exist to create posts across multiple platforms at once, but I’m not running a business – to an average platform user like me, I feel that aggregators make the already-impersonal act of posting even less personal.

I’ve also been a vocal proponent of letting how other people feel about you remain their problem, in efforts to give myself peace and to release myself from the judgment of others. Meanwhile, I failed to recognize that letting other people keep ownership of their feelings should have also applied to me and mine. I’ve mentioned in at least one of my other big writings that once you stop judging others, you feel less judged yourself, so now the time and energy you save by keeping things to yourself can be used in other, likely more constructive ways. So what the hell have I been doing?

Offline, people engage in small talk – not because they might lack creativity or intellectual depth like sapiosexuals online would have you believe, but because it can be a neutral conversation starter that would determine how you continue your interactions. With online spaces, I could go from not knowing a person exists to being upset in seconds over being shown an example of how problematic they are or were. I firmly believe that people should strive to be compassionate and informed – and offline, what I know truly won’t hurt me – but I would rather not be subjected to people that aren’t interested in being either.

In addition to “The Algorithm” controlling what we see and when, the speed at which we can reach people or access news can create a sense of expectation to be plugged in and available at all times. For years, I had been plagued with “feeling on-call” in case something happens where my input is needed. After my time on social media thus far, I recognize this sense of being on-call as a form of the proverbial “fear of missing out”, colloquialized as “FOMO”. If you stay plugged in to keep from missing out for long enough, social media can let you know too much at once, especially about other people.

One litmus test I use to determine how I interact with potential new friends is asking them how they feel about scary movies. Some of my favorite memories are of family gatherings – with eight to ten aunts and uncles each on either side of my family, and all of the cousins that I grew up with like siblings – that turned to telling stories of when these aunts and uncles were growing up themselves, which would then turn to stories of supernatural things happening to them. While traumatic to them, at least at first, I attribute my own affinity for supernatural horror and ghost-hunting shows to growing up hearing these stories – not to mention, horror movies are more likely to hold my attention span. If I don’t have to watch or listen for clues or plot points on screen, I’ll probably reach for my phone and start scrolling timelines, harvesting dopamine with the push of each button and the clearing of each notification bubble.

Most people won’t know the backstory for why I list The Shining as one of my favorite movies just by looking at where I might’ve listed it on my profile. People will see the still-life pictures I stage at my bedroom desk with a delicately and meticulously worded caption before they’ll know how long it took me (and why!) to pin an LGBTQ+ pride flag over the bulletin board in the background. No one will know the significance of the things pinned to that bulletin board unless I write about it. We know too much about each other while simultaneously not knowing each other at all.

People tend to put their best foot forward online. Passing them by, at least offline, can at most give an incomplete impression of who they are. We are told not to compare our unedited footage or our cutting-room floor to everyone else’s highlight reels, which give an illusion that their lives might somehow be better than yours. Maybe it is – and is that so terrible?

People are not against you or me or anyone specific, but rather simply for themselves. Social media is this idea, set into action. It’s not that people don’t care – they just care differently. How a coworker or manager might present at work might not align with how they present online, and I’m no exception to that. Not to mention, how I interact with a coworker, online or off, will vary from how I interact with friends or family because interactions with my coworkers can impact my access to income. Family and friends know you better than anyone at work ever could, so these relationships feel more resilient. If worse comes to worse between two people online, one person can delete or block the other. Offline, the only legal equivalent would be a restraining order, and those aren’t always successful.

At this point I feel that I’m in too deep to leave even one of the several social media platforms that I’m on, at least not by my choice. It’s become a running joke that “[insert platform name here] isn’t a train station”, and people that “needlessly” announce their departure from social media even temporarily are pathologized and reduced to attention seekers – often because the people calling them attention seekers are blind to the reasons why those people are leaving.

It’s important to mention that the world in general has already been openly hostile towards marginalized people, especially towards indigenous people and LGBTQ+ people. Our current administration is already removing mentions of “gender ideology” in agency documentation, and major information resources are being shuttered. As an indigenous person, I’m no stranger to erasure. Prior to coming out, I felt powerless to begin to learn about my identities within the context of my heritage: I felt that what few resources that existed were gatekept, and that I would have to out myself as queer or try to prove my nativeness in order to access them. Information has existed before, and it will again even if we have to rebuild it. I and we, indigenous people and LGBTQ+ people, are told repeatedly that we are resilient – and we are. I just wish we didn’t have to be.

After struggling to identify my reasons why I would leave social media if I wanted to, I’ve decided that I’m not going anywhere. There was, however, a period of time recently where my morning routine would include logging into my work computer, sending a Snapchat-streak selfie from my desk to anyone still on the app, and then re-sharing old posts from my Memories tab on Facebook out of a sense of obligation. Many things in life are fun until they aren’t. For me, now, social media as an institution is not fun anymore. Aside from everything I have used it for, what I in my condition thought was notification anxiety was really a notification addiction. Like a game of whack-a-mole, the rush of winning by clearing notification dots and bubbles really just takes away from how the prize is only ever one less mole to whack. 

I remember writing an essay that I eventually published as a MySpace blog entry around the time the movie Lady in the Water was released, around 2006. It was for a school assignment, likely Social Studies-related and intended to be political and persuasive in nature. I don’t even remember what I wrote, but whatever the assignment was, the views I expressed were probably hopelessly romantic and delusional. I had clear ideas of what I wanted to be simple outcomes that I thought would benefit everyone, but I had no concept of everything that would be required to achieve them. 

I didn’t originally set out to write any of this to wax political. If I showed this to any version of my younger self, I would be shocked at how much I’ve come to engage in political conversations. I suppose that in adulthood you either become so proficient at whatever interests you held before becoming politically conscious that you learn to multitask – or you flounder and lose sight of those interests, instead doing things because you have to and not because you want to. My condition, and having grown up during such an intense time of technological development and advancement, has made multitasking an ADHD superpower of mine – but I am goddamn exhausted.

Having referenced “the importance of taking things offline” for as long as I’ve been writing about it, I haven’t written much about the importance of doing anything. And to critique something like social media that has almost become a utility service like electricity – by no means a necessity, but an expectation just the same – feels useless the more I think about it. Twice in my life I’ve used the phrase, “I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you how what you did made me feel.” None of this was intended to be any kind of directive – I hardly know if there was any point to writing any of this other than to acknowledge how tired I am of everything, while meandering through the reasons why.

I am ultimately not leaving social media, and I maintain that I won’t tell anyone what to do. To my friends and family on social media – and to those courageous enough to have left already – this, my novel of a take on the current state of social media is no indication of the state of our relationship offline, as should be the case. If nothing else, I would like to continue using social media less overall, if not more judiciously, more intentionally – while re-learning to be comfortable living offline.