That’s it, I’m breaking up with social media

The love affair is over. It’s the end of a rosefiltered era. I’ve decided I’m breaking up with social media. And honestly, it feels like it’s been coming on a while . . . These days I use Facebook for work, the odd group and looking up the weekend opening hours of cafes. I don’t remember the last time I posted a status update . . . I deleted Twitter years ago so it’s only really Instagram that I still use.

And even then I mainly watch the stories and avoid the 99 per cent of my feed which is basically smoothie bowls or girls looking as blank as said bowls of blueberry slop.

But even this week, what with the shadow of the Christchurch massacre, the upcoming ‘‘Christchurch Call’’ conference and poor Mermaid Pools suffering a instafamous influx . . . I’ve realised I’ve come to hate it.

Part of this is because all of the big three platforms, which I found so fun and fresh in the beginning, now seem to have slid into mulchy pits of shouting or self-interest.

Despite starting out as a place for the witty and succinct, Twitter has been awful for a good while now. I deleted it years ago after realising it made me feel like I was stuck in a cage with illiterate, angry ferrets.

It was probably about the same time that Facebook morphed from feeling like a fun night out with the girls to a soporific, self-obsessed high school reunion. And, after it’s staggered through scandals like Cambridge Analytica and live-streaming a mass murder, it’s starting to feel distinctly dark and sinister.

And this week it was the fall of Instagram, what with it being linked to the devastation of the Mermaid rock pools in Northland by insta-hungry tourists. Again proving that, from yoga to Holocaust memorials, there is nothing that influencers can’t ruin.

But I’m not alone in needing to break up with social media. In fact, it’s part of a growing trend that sees Gen-Zers (those born after ’95) increasingly quitting it.

Despite the myth that we young things are supposedly addicted to screens, in 2017 63 per cent of British schoolkids said they’d be happy if social media hadn’t been invented. And in 2018, half of surveyed Gen-Zers said they had quit or were considering quitting a social media platform.

In another survey that year, the percentage of 18 and 24-year-olds who agreed with the statement ‘‘social media is important to me’’ fell from 66 per cent in 2017 to 57 per cent in 2018. It seems as older generations get into it, younger ones are over it.

And honestly, it’s not hard to work out why. While I find it fun as a business tool, and for talking about my writing, using social media for my private life makes me flat out miserable.

I’ve never been unhappier than during my shortlived stint trying to be an ‘‘influencer’’.

And this week I realised I was done living with the thousand tiny miseries hammered into me with every double tap.

For a start, I’m over having to wade through the daily deluge of drivel to find anything worth paying attention to. Initially I thought it would be fun to see what my friends were ordering for breakfast.

It’s not. It makes me feel like my brain is overflowing with undercooked hollandaise sauce when what it really needs to feed on is some healthy, interesting, well-researched news.

Not to mention the constant stream of perfectly curated images is utterly soul destroying. Not only have I found that it makes me hate my perfectly normal-looking body, but it’s also wrecking my brain. I’ll spend hours scrolling through my friends’ far more exciting lives, wondering constantly why I wasn’t invited to the boutique yoga pants pop-up store to sip iced charcoal flavoured wee.

And I do this while knowing that I hate yoga, can’t do a downward dog and would rather gouge out my eyes with a paperclip than have a conversation about chakras.

I’m not alone in my generation in feeling this way. A 2017 survey for the Royal Society for Public Health found Instagram to be the most harmful social media for negative feelings around body image and FOMO. And, given that research has shown young Kiwi women in the 18-24 brackets are currently experiencing record levels of anxiety and exhaustion, we do not need Instagram reaching into that hornet’s nest of inadequacy and giving it a huge punch.

But honestly, the real kicker is that it’s eroding my faith in humanity. It feels like a scary time right now, what with terror attacks, climate change, the rise of the far Right, Brexit and the giant cheezle running the United States.

It’s a time when I want to be surrounded by examples of humanity’s strength, intelligence and compassion. Not our staggering self-absorption, bitchiness or fondness for unicorn freak shakes.

I want to be surrounded by examples of humanity’s strength, intelligence and compassion.