I don’t use WhatsApp or any other social media*
I am someone who aspires to be present. I love the idea of doing one thing at a time. I crave the ability to concentrate on a task for a couple of hours, like I was able to when I still coded.
I am also easily distracted. Messaging apps and social media easily scatter my attention.
I am also committed. Many people have tried to convince me to restart using these apps by sharing a multitude of reasons but I have not budged.
I also try to keep an open mind. When multiple people told me that social media can play a huge role on the work front, I had to give it a try.
Not to bite off more than I can chew, I decided to do it as an experiment. I planned to post on Instagram for 2-4 weeks to see if I had it in me. Inspired by Jocko Willink, I decided to post a photo of my watch face that I took around the time I woke up. Thanks to my dad, I have been an early riser all my life. Waking up was not at all a challenge but getting the photo right and thinking of a caption was painful to me. Within 2 weeks of starting this experiment, I was sure that social media was not for me. I find no joy in sharing stuff online. I don’t give up easily so I posted for a few more weeks, including a few pictures other than my watch face. Then I stopped.
. 
And then I learned how social media has changed the way (most) people think! On Instagram, I was followed mostly by friends, family, colleagues (present and ex). Post my Instagram experiment, I would connect with these folks every now and then, and to my shock, every one of them would ask me, “So did you stop waking up early?”
It was clear that each one of them thought that I had stopped posting because I had stopped waking up. None of them could fathom that I continue to wake up early but I had just stopped posting. I have slowly come to terms with the fact that for most people if it is not on social media, then it probably did not happen.
*I have not deleted my accounts on Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp, though I don’t use them. I do use LinkedIn but off late I have been thinking of logging out of LinkedIn too.
ps - Thanks to Yogesh for kindly sharing pictures of my Instagram account for this post.