I Have 24,000 Followers, But I Still Feel Lonely On Social Media

I have this distinct memory of a summer family party in Queens, New York. While the grown-ups danced to Joe Arroyo’s salsa hits in the backyard and kids ran around the driveway playing tag, I announced the most awesome idea: “Let's make a zombie movie!” All the children agreed. With our semi-bulky 1990s camcorder, we shot our mini movie in sequence of events. I, then 12 years old, directed one of the 5-year-olds to growl and walk slow enough to match the gait of an infected zombie. As the brain-seeking toddlers searched for their next meal, the older kids followed my instructions and ran away screaming in fear. In the end, the zombies won, the victims played dead on the floor, the toddler zombies attacked the camera, and scene.

I remember us watching it back on the camcorder and laughing at the absurdity of our creation. It was my directorial debut. And to this day, I have no clue where that footage lives. It’s one of those things that randomly pops into my head in the middle of the night and keeps me up (where is that footage?!). But perhaps it’s better this way. It was a creative moment, a collaboration with friends. It wasn’t meant for anyone but us to see. Oh, how things have changed. Now I can’t do anything creative without someone asking me why I didn’t post it on social media, and I hate it. 

I used to love social media. It was a digital space where I could learn, make art, educate, and build community around shared interests. I was a pretty popular content creator, producing, shooting, and starring in videos critiquing media, culture, and society through a Latina feminist lens. But now I hate social media. I hate how capitalism has turned what was creative, fun, instructive, and communal into endless ads, product placements, and user-generated content created to gain the attention, and capital, of brands. Everything, from brunch with friends to home renovations, feels so deliberately and highly produced. And it’s exhausting. I long for the days when social media was this new virtual territory where we could meet people and create on blank canvases without the pressures of likes, shares, and follows. I so desperately want to return to that, to reclaim the youthful joy I once had using these platforms. 

I grew up on the Internet and witnessed in real time how social media became everything to us. There was AIM, where creating screen names and away messages were a creative after-school project. That prepared us for Myspace, where we constructed pages that felt like an extension of ourselves through the music we added and the friends who made it to our top 8. Next Facebook arrived and we were suddenly publicly telling all of our loved ones what was on our minds. Then, with Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, and TikTok, we moved beyond our circle of friends and into the public sphere. 

These were spaces where I could connect with others and feel less alone, maybe even create art that made other people feel less alone, too. In my last year of college, I made my first YouTube channel, creating videos that critiqued the media — advertising, TV shows, and movies — through a comedic and feminist lens. My first video — titled “Girl can’t eat a banana?” — came about after a disturbing, yet all too common, interaction I had on the bus: A man stared at me feverishly as I ate a banana. To me, even in a violent act like street harassment, there was something humorous about a grown man sexualizing such a mundane moment. When I look at the half-vlog, half-skit-style video, I cringe. But I also envy that version of me. I funneled my anger into art. It was cathartic, and I had fun creating it with friends. 

And it resonated. It didn’t get millions, or even tens of thousands, of views, but the women who empathized and laughed at my concept inspired me to keep going. Although I never “blew up” as a YouTuber and never monetized my videos, I gained a community. Women I had never met cheered me on or shared their own frustrations with me around the patriarchy. I wasn’t creating videos to become famous or influence others. I just wanted all of us, myself included, to feel less alone. And we were less alone. I met my closest friends online, friends who attended my wedding, rallied around me when I got a divorce, and asked me to be their daughter’s godmother.

Fast forward more than a decade later, I have 24 thousand followers on Instagram and have never felt more alone, at least online. And my feelings of loneliness aren't unique. According to a 2017 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, more social media usage is actually linked with increased feelings of social isolation. In other words, we’re all on social media, but that doesn’t mean there’s much that’s really social about these platforms anymore. Instead of bonding over shared experiences through art, we’re bombarded with influencers trying to sell us a product or promote a lifestyle to increase their follower count or make money off of views. It feels noisy and transactional, leaving me feeling uninspired and unsure how to make genuine connections on these platforms anymore. 

To be clear, I don’t blame influencers for taking advantage of social media. I’ve done it, too. We have to make money to survive, after all. Instead of selling products, I used my social media platforms to propel my career. My cringy yet passionate YouTube videos landed me my first full-time job producing videos for a then-new tech company. I didn’t go to school for production, so I was learning on the job (and through YouTube). Soon enough, I became a 360-producer, scripting, filming, and editing. And now I’m a documentary producer working with large streaming platforms. I owe my entire career to the Internet and social media. In this sense, I understand full-time influencers and using TikTok or Instagram to pay bills.

But that’s the sneaky thing about capitalism: it's really good at sensing genuine talent, art, or community and transforming it into an energy-sucking money machine. The capitalist reconstruction of social media can make us money, but it depletes us of everything else. And sometimes it happens without us even realizing it. Capitalism has turned some of my online faves into company spokespeople or brand ambassadors. Unfortunately, when we tie our creativity to capitalism, it often comes with its own set of restrictions and guidelines. If we don’t perform or create in a way that generates the most money possible, if we don’t follow the formula, we get left behind. But those who can keep up aren’t adding anything new anymore because of the limits imposed on them; so as viewers, we all end up consuming the same content over and over again. It’s performative. And as a theater kid, I love a good performance. But we’re no longer performing for ourselves or each other; we’re performing for the algorithm.

At some point, my spirit had enough. I started to post less of my life online. I stopped using Instagram Stories and Instagram Live entirely. Many people noticed and messaged me, asking, “Where did you go?” What a telling question, reflective of our generation’s relationship to social media. If I don’t exist online, do I even exist at all? As much as the people who follow me on social media mean to me, I needed to step back so I could preserve myself and the things I love. My desire to create art and build relationships shouldn’t only extend to social media, it shouldn’t only, or mostly, be consumable photos and micro videos. 

In the past year or so, I’ve been intentional about trying to connect with people in person and keeping a lot of my creative projects to myself. I bought a house. I learned how to use power tools and made an eight-foot-long dining table on my own. I started to paint with watercolors. I made several arts and crafts gifts for my girlfriend. I hosted a Halloween party in my home. I’ve gone on monthly hikes with a collective of queer women. And I’ve had several coffee dates with people I wanted to get to know deeper. I did all of this without making it content. I made it for whom it was intended for: me. And I did it because it brought me joy.

My relationship with social media isn’t over. And it probably won’t ever be. But the relationship has changed. Social media now plays a supporting, not primary, role in my joy from connecting with others and creating art. In a few weeks, I’ll have friends over for dinner. We’ll sit at my dining room table, share a meal, play games, laugh, and maybe even cry. We may even post a picture of ourselves on the ‘gram to commemorate the moment. But what I know for sure is we’ll share experiences that only those who were present will remember.