Did Social Media Make me Sick?

Was my crippling fatigue really just social media bringing me down?

For the past couple of years I’ve been feeling intensely exhausted. I didn’t pay much mind to it, thinking that I was tired because of having a pre-schooler to chase around, but then it started to feel worse. I would need 15 minutes to just sit and rest, usually scroll, in between tasks. I’d do an hour of something and need to sit down. I’d go for a walk and wish there was a bench nearby.

I also didn’t think too much about this, either.

Afterall, I get tons of migraines and it leaves me shattered. Why wouldn’t I be a little more tired than usual?

Then, this summer came. And, with it came billows of smoke that enveloped my province. There would be clear days where the wind had shifted and I could frolic outside in the much-missed sunshine and ‘fresh’ air. The smoke had kept me inside way too often this summer, making my migraines worse, and making my fatigue even more intense.

I talked to my therapist, wondering if it was a psychological thing or just what in the hell was happening. We took three sessions to deem that I wasn’t in a severe depressive state, but I was still so tired that I would be wanting to fall asleep driving to any appointment. We took things off of my plate to help lessen the load of having to do everything and feeling like I had to do everything.

This helped, somewhat. I began to get ready-made meals, I already had a cleaner come in once a month, I stopped worrying about if the house was tidy and just let everything go. The garden grew wild, and I only just took my carrots out yesterday. Don’t feel bad for them, they don’t mind the cold. I tried for more walks outside, cocooning myself in nature. I took out almost all sugars from my diet. I started doing things just for myself, like getting an afternoon coffee.

I had taken so many things off my list, added healthy enjoyable activities, and yet I still felt completely and utterly exhausted. Not every day, mind you. Not every second. But in giant waves that crashed into my body. And then, everything changed.

Kind of.

I had wondered if the lead in my old antique plates I loved so much had been leeching into my food and myself for the last couple of years, giving me chronic lead poisoning. My OCD took me down a particularly wild spiral with that. Clearly, the lead had gotten to my brain and I couldn’t even use it, anymore. I took the plates downstairs and bought all new ones from IKEA, opting for a fun pink since I wasn’t using my beautiful china, anymore. It felt like maybe I had found the cause, but I wasn’t 100% that it was the actual cause, or that it was the only cause.

I got blood-work done, and then another sheet of blood-work. I talked to my doctor (well, a doctor) about my fatigue. She suggested a sheet to be filled out regarding depression. After I told her it had been ruled out by another doctor who did that for her living. It felt like a never-ending loop of exhaustion that would never be fixed. But then I also did something else: I quit Instagram.

I no longer scrolled, seeing the horrifics of the world. I still read about them in the newspaper, but it really hits different reading from an actual journalist instead of someone screaming in a video just right after you had seen a video of an adorable kitten. I was following someone who lived in Gaza, and while it is so important to see what is happening in the world, perhaps we were never made to see buildings blown up on the daily.

I stopped putting ethics into every single decision I made because someone wasn’t yelling at me to boycott this or boycott that. Sure, I agree with a lot of people in that we shouldn’t be giving our money to corporations who fund terrible things, be it genocide or hatred towards LGBTQ2S+, but I stopped worrying about my Starbucks that I get once a month, or once every three months. The same as I eat at McDonald’s, or shop at Wal-Mart every so often. Sometimes, that’s all there is and it’s the only thing that has what you need.

I started focusing on the everyday people’s writing, on real journalism, on doing more of my own creative projects. I started things just because I wanted to and because it would be fun. I read more books. I stopped doomscrolling, even if I saw myself slipping into it every so often. Even if it feels like doomscrolling on Substack, sometimes. Even if I open up Instagram every week to check out what’s happening.

It was like a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I had made my feed pretty tight and never went into the explore page. But, because I enjoy politics and news and everything that comes with it, my feed was filled with stressors. BIG stressors. Once I checked out of Instagram, I felt like I could breathe, again. The BIG stressors were still around the corner, still in newspaper articles, but they were far more digestible. My brain wasn’t going from happy to sad to stressed to excited to angry in the manner of seconds.

I may not, fully, know what has caused my extreme fatigue. It may be lurking around the corner. I still need to follow up with doctors and talk about blood-work and keep my to-do list a little shorter. I probably won’t take my antique plates out, at least not for a long time. But, maybe it was more than the initial things I had thought. Maybe it was really just Instagram all along.

Originally published at https://michelleleeann.substack.com.