Stepping away from the Social-Meeds

I am so weirded out by people getting engaged and going straight to Facebook to share the news with everyone right away.  I am weirded out by people having a new child, a new person to the world, and posting picture after picture that pretty much documents their life from birth.  

I try not to be "braggy" or do an outright humble brag, but I find that purposely trying to step away from falling into that trap has helped my recent engagement tremendously.  My now fiancé and I actively chose to tell the good news to our family and friends in person or at least by phone/video chat before posting about it on social media.  Don't get me wrong, we will do that at some point, but we also want to make sure to let as many people know straight from us possible. We've also been telling everyone that we are choosing NOT to use social media about it right now and we ask them to refrain from letting the cat out of the proverbial bag.

We are still in the process of doing this, but it's been so nice to do this at this time.  We've been able to get people on the phone and catch up with how their lives are going and every single person we've talked to (together and separately) has appreciated that we've been telling them personally of the good news rather than just sharing it on social media.  

I became very aware of how social media was effecting me when I would post funny anecdotes, news, or opinions and I wouldn't get as many comments or "likes" as I thought those posts deserved.  There's been times where I've become obsessed with checking how many likes I would get on a post that I would think would just kill, but been disappointed by the seeming lack of interest from my digital friendship world.

Not this time!  I am in a wonderful relationship where the love of my life is just as traditional as I am and wants to support my wishes of refraining for a good amount of time from sharing online until we reach out to as many people as we can.

Consider it!  How different would your life be if you didn't immediately think of going to Facebook to share some good news as soon as it came up?

UPDATE: June 18 - I just got back to the states from traveling in Portugal for the last 18 days and I feel like I'm noticing my difficulty with social media.  While in Portugal, I was not able to use my phone except while in the apartment we rented.  Now that I'm back in the states again, I'm back to checking my social media several times a day, and it's showing me that I'm not any better than the people that I judge.  I need to get away from this as much as I can to be able to live my life where I am, not just online.