Categories Lifestyle

Low-Key Millennial

by

For those millennials born in the wrong era, being low-key proves to be quite the issue. You wonder what you’re missing out on and you retreat into the land of more intimate interpersonal communications. But staying low-key remains a viable world-interface option.

I am currently discretionarily using Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. However, I tend to stay off of larger social media platforms for a number of reasons:

  1. My number one reason is my sense of privacy. I am a very private person and I feel vulnerable when I am on social media. There are precautions that you can take to remain more private, but the idea of having a personal data-driven profile that establishes personal connections publicly is scary to me.
  2. My second most personally compelling reason is keeping away from incremental discourse. This meaning, the method in which points are argued online frustrates me. I prefer a more long-form discourse model and cannot keep up with short bursts of argumentation.
  3. I get caught up in the numbers game. I’m not proud of it, but I definitely pay attention to the number of likes I get. I’ve been able to care less about the numbers as I accumulate experience on my chosen social media accounts. However, there’s still that nagging feeling of content worthiness to my audience.
  4. I get embarrassed easily by public displays of my intimate and momentary life details. This stems from my (more-than) tendency to overthink how my actions are portrayed. For me, posting an item means bravery, because it means sharing something about myself publicly that someone may not like.
  5. I can’t stop scrolling once I get started. When I’m on larger social media networks, I compulsively open and close the app on my phone throughout the whole day. I don’t think of doing those things I typically love like reading, writing, and running. I haven’t been able to feel comfortable enough with it to stop checking in on it.

All in all, I prefer to stay relatively low-key on social media for my own sake. I admire those who use it efficiently and to promote their self-brand. There’s an art to branding to social media that I have not mastered, and don’t intend to. I’m content to remain a low-key millennial.