Why I am ghosting social media

Having a presence on social media has not only become a norm, but also a necessity for many. However, some are rebelling against it.

- Leslie Koh

"What's your IG handle?" It was a question I've always tried to avoid because while I have an Instagram account, I'm so inactive that I consider myself to be not on IG. As expected, my answer brought horrified gasps of incredulity.

"What?! You're not on IG?!"

The thing is, the question (and gasps) didn't come from a bunch of millennials or Gen Zers who could not fathom anyone surviving without an Instagram account. They came from a group of writers around my age.

I don't blame them. Any self-respecting freelance writer or editor, I suppose, would need a social media presence to market himself. That's how you advertise your skills, expertise and availability, and that's how clients find you. No digital presence may simply mean no business.

Which, as I enter the world of freelancers, may be a risk I'm taking.

My social media presence, by today's professional standards, is abysmal. I have a LinkedIn account, only because I thought the writers I edit might want to find out exactly who was destroying their precious copy. I have a Facebook account, which I check once every month or two; I started it only because I got tired of people asking: "How come you don't have a Facebook account?" I'm all but dormant on IG, I'm not on TikTok, and the total number of social media posts I have made in my entire life could be counted on the fingers of two hands.

You could say I'm ghosting social media.

("Ghosting", by the way, is a modern slang for the sudden unexplained termination of communication amounting to social rejection. Which, I have to confess in my case, excludes the rejection of WhatsApp and YouTube, which I spend far more time on than I should. They're technically social media, too, but in my feeble defence, I treat them as messenger and video streaming apps, rather than as interactive platforms.)