I just noticed I haven’t visited Lemmygrad in a month, cause I was afraid of opening the site. Same reason I ignore important emails, don’t respond to friends and sometimes “ghost” people. If someone calls me on the phone, I answer, if someone wants to hang out I go and hang out, but it is so easy to shut out the digital world. Kind of unfortunate everything is moving to the digital realm… or is it by design? Is it a feature of the digital system that those of us with anxiety won’t be able to participate fully? People ask me if I have instagram, nope. I don’t post about my life on social media, yet that is what is expected to be a participating member of today’s society.
I also suffer from anxiety, and I do a lot of the same behaviours as you, including a minimal digital footprint. I have nothing useful to offer you though, aside from some comradeship. I know well how insidious anxiety is, and I do my best to avoid it creeping into my head. This means a limit on digital interactions.
I guess the difference though that I’m old enough that having my life be online is not an expectation (although I have been questioned about it in the past, it’s not uncommon for my age or field of work). So I doubt I have the digital pressure that you do. That has to suck. I’m sorry.
It’s not so much pressure as feeling that that’s the only way to interact nowadays. I’ve been asked a bunch of times if I have instagram (cause facebook is pasé now, yet they are both owned by the same company lol). I regret getting a fb account, so I don’t think I’ll be getting an instagram account, not falling for that again.
Before social media we used to just meet outside and hang out, now people do things so they can craft a social media image of themselves. It’s all planned outings with start and end times, Facebook events. I just feel like I’m not participating in society if I’m not commenting on someone’s post. People don’t call one another to talk about things, it’s all fb/instagram posts for the world.
I usually coordinate with my friends through SMS (or WhatsApp for my European friends). I had a Facebook account for some family members who are like that, but when I changed my name, I just kind of abandoned it. I’ve never had an Instagram account, and I only ever signed up for Twitter in order to enter a couple of contests. I never actually used it, and I’m not sure I even remember the password. I do have some presence on Discord, which I find distasteful, but not nearly so much as Facebook or Instagram. But again, it’s primarily to keep in contact with people I know who are part of that culture. I don’t really use it otherwise.
I have WhatsApp to talk to family and a few friends. I never liked discord so I’m not there either. I tried making a twitter account some 5-6 years ago but it asked for a phone number so that was an immediate nope from me.