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Danielle Venables's avatar

I love so many of your reflections here I kept pausing and thinking about commenting in response to individual points, but kept reading. Your insights are so potent and, in my view, accurate. Thank you for letting us witness you ❤️ this is exactly why I'm here - wouldn't see this kind of depth and transparency on FB or ig.

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Michelle Dixon, Ph.D.'s avatar

I 1000 million percent agree. I wrote this article about my experience of quitting social media. https://open.substack.com/pub/michelledixonwriter/p/i-quit-social-media-for-nearly-3?r=heoec&utm_medium=ios

Right now I use Instagram to share my Substack articles. I’m not even on Facebook anymore. I don’t miss it at all but it sucks a little bit because it seems like I’m missing out on some social events that some of my women friends seem to only promote to each other on Facebook. Yet at the same time, it was really compromising my mental health.

Like you, I have battled with a kind of comparison game that I knew wasn’t valid or meaningful, but it kind of got me sucked into the sense of what I should be doing. Substack has been an absolute revelation for me. I’m allowed to write whatever I want. There are people who read my writing and actually like it and engage with it.

Have so much to say about it! I never heard of that Instagram account you mentioned with the woman with eight kids, but I found myself getting sucked into that too even though my three children are already young adults …. it taps into a part of me that longs for some kind of ideal lifestyle. Which is hilarious as I am menopausal and again, have three young adults, who are, incidentally, absolutely amazing humans despite the less than Instagram worthy childhood that they had!

Great to see you on here and I look forward to more content !

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