Column | Some celibacy doesn’t make you a better person, but it strangely calms the mind

“Tell me now, what is it like”, the friend asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it in public when it sounds so pretentious.”

“I don’t really care what it’s like to be without. That is, for longer than a week.”

Alright. I have lived without social media for almost three years. There was no single or special reason for becoming celibate. The decision matured on its own over many months.

I had been using social media since its dawn. I loved it. But something was off.

The first thing I noticed was that it stole my time. Demanded more attention all the time, and if you fished correctly, you would get compliments. And that nagging! All conversations devolved into strange nagging and accusations. What annoyed me the most was that it annoyed me. Why on earth?

Because the brain doesn’t understand social media. They originally developed to manage small districts. That’s why our emotions online don’t know how to distinguish familiar and important people from strangers and less important ones and don’t put online comments on the right scale, explains brain researcher Lauri Nummenmaa excellently Emotional atlasin his book.

It is vital for people to act as a mirror for each other, but the contact jungle of social media and the non-stop reporting of what others are doing gets our social mind in a knot and pushes the brain’s moral buttons into overdrive.

No wonder it’s annoying.

As one on a spring day, without prejudging, I let my moral guard rest. I removed my social media account from all the platforms I use.

I felt relief. I still feel. The cacophony in my head has subsided, and more hours have been added to the days. There have been no withdrawal symptoms.

“

There are many of us who live without.

On the other hand, it may not have been possible to come, because traditional media report social media content so diligently. Many times it even seems to be forgotten that social media and its bubble do not reflect the entire population and attitudes of Finland. According to Statistics Finland About one in three of the 16-year-olds do not use social media at all.

So there are many of us who live without.

“But being unsocial doesn’t make anyone a better person, at least black hasn’t. That is, if this somehow sounds like statuary.”

“Yes, even sober people can tell you what it’s like without booze, and that’s not self-praise.”

The author is a producer of Tiede magazine.