Consciously choosing your health can be done in many ways. By exercising, quitting smoking, or meditating every day. In November last year Mariko Naber (43) decided to stop all her social media. She now only uses it when it is necessary for her work.
In November 2018 Mariko decided to change course. She deleted all her private social media accounts and decided to use them only for business. Mariko has the company ' Sell your stuff online ' with her husband Mark . They design branding for other companies and offer courses on how to make an online business or webshop successful. "It's quite difficult because a lot of my work revolves around social media. But at a certain point I felt like I was only working on that."
No more conversation through social media
"I really wanted to get rid of it, because I missed the 'real' contact with people. Acquaintances assume that - when they are very active on Instagram or Facebook - you also know everything about them." Mariko finds this a pity. "Then you meet someone in real life and you just don't have anything to talk about anymore. At one point I thought that was so sad that I decided to stop." Mariko now has more time for useful things: "I started exercising and I am more critical of the time I have. I no longer have to compulsively scroll through my feed and that saves more time than you think."
It was not difficult for Mariko to suspend her personal accounts. "A lot of things that I saw in my timeline made me think: but I don't want to know this at all? It gives me a lot of peace to no longer have to worry about what other people place on their timeline. It's nicer to get a phone call instead of those eternal impersonal online congratulations on my birthday. I also prefer to receive invitations to parties analogously."
Social reduction with policy!
Mariko still has WhatsApp on her phone, but has gone out of all group apps. "When something is urgent, people text me personally. In the beginning I had the feeling that people found that very annoying. But if they know and appreciate you well enough, they also appreciate your choice." Is she afraid of missing out? "No. If people have questions or would like you to come to their party, you'll hear that."
Today Mariko offers a Digital detox . She wants to inspire others with this. "I'm not going to stand with a banner encouraging people to do it, but I do think it's a nice move." She has another tip for everyone who, like Mariko, wants to start 'social reducing': "Don't delete everything at once like crazy, but make a backup of your Facebook and Instagram profile first. You don't want to lose all the memories you have. built up over the years."
The complete article Mariko stopped using social media: I was only concerned with what others saw , written by Paula Vaarkamp, can be found on the RTLnieuws website.
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