When did it become socially or culturally acceptable to “like” a Facebook status or “love” an Instagram reel in lieu of sending a card or flowers, or making a phone call of congratulations or condolence? When did we trade real-world interaction and interpersonal effort for likes, thumbs-ups, and social-media-based communication?

When did we become so low-effort as a society toward one another?

We complain about being lonely, unseen, misunderstood, “lacking a village,” yet we do little more to interact with the very people who could fill so many of our relational voids than acknowledge something they post online, if we even do that.

I’ve always been someone who chooses effort in relationships. Not perfectly. Not consistently. And certainly not with every person in my life. But the people who truly matter to me, I hope they can say that, at least in some ways, I’ve tried to show up for them in real, tangible ways throughout my life.

When I look at how little passes as “effort” these days, my heart grows more sickened by the year. Not only does it feel like the art of relationships and meaningful communication is being replaced with vapid, empty sentiment, it feels like meaningful communication itself may be disappearing entirely. Is it hard to imagine a world in which a person could go an entire year without hearing a true, thoughtful word spoken directly to them by someone they care about?

The arguments against social media are vast and have been made for decades. I won’t belabor them here. The breakdown of social norms, cohesion, and closeness is visible by now, and yet very few people I know have left its clutches. They may post less, but they are still active users. Whether extracting information, as is often my purpose, mindlessly scrolling, checking in on the few who still share their lives online, or for reasons I don’t understand, the fact remains that billions of people still use social media every day.

And yet we collectively sigh over our loneliness.

It pains me to admit that I ran my own social experiment. It began a couple of months before I got pregnant and ended roughly around the time I gave birth. I deactivated my social media accounts for nearly an entire year to be more present in my life and pregnancy, but also to see whether any of my real-life relationships would reach out via the old-fashioned phone during that time.

My unspoken question was simple. Can we go back to the way it was if I opt out of all this? If I remove myself and stop feeding the beast, will more personal connection return? And even more personally, if I disappear, will anyone notice? Will it matter? Will anyone come looking for me?

It brings me no joy to share the results.

In an entire year off social media, not a single friend or family member initiated a phone call or text. If I spoke to anyone, it was because I made the effort to reach out first. In fact, no one seemed to notice I was gone at all. And when I eventually reactivated my accounts, no one mentioned my absence, despite it having lasted nearly a year.

I’ll admit I’m an unusual case. I used to post quite a lot before I got married. But over the last four to five years, I’ve made conscious choices to reduce my online presence in pursuit of peace and privacy. People would have seen less of me anyway, so perhaps there was less to miss. Out of sight, out of mind.

I’ve also lived in New Zealand for the past six years and watched my friendships back home fade with each passing year, a pain I can hardly put into words. Those relationships slowly transitioned into hollow social media interactions and, eventually, nearly nothing at all. So maybe I was never the ideal subject for such an experiment. Maybe exiting social media was simply the final confirmation of a reality life had already been handing me throughout my late thirties.

Perhaps someone more connected, more social, or living closer to their community would be deeply noticed and missed if they disappeared. Or perhaps they would experience exactly what I did. Try it yourself and let me know.

What I know is this. I went an entire year hearing from absolutely no one unless I reached out first.

Ouch.

That realization taught me many things, chief among them that I have not built relationships with people who truly care about me in the way I once believed. That’s not self-pity. It’s data. Many of the relationships I hold onto do not hold onto me in return. That’s a truth I will work to correct in the future, when I’m not wrangling a toddler.

The strangest takeaway came after I reactivated my accounts. The likes and surface-level interactions returned as if I’d never left. But this time, they felt different. Hollow. Mechanical. As though people were performing an action rather than expressing care.

Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe every like and comment is meaningful to the person giving it. But to me, it feels like vapor. And how it feels to both parties matters. It’s hard not to wonder. If you didn’t notice I was gone for a year, why should I believe you care about this post?

So now the battle wages in my heart. Do I unplug entirely, forever?

I resist the idea daily. It seems like an easy decision until I think about the decades of photos, thoughts, videos, and moments I’d lose instantly. The people I’ve met. The thin threads of connection that still exist. And the quiet fear that once I delete it all, I may never hear from anyone again. That I’ll have to rebuild relationally from scratch, finding people who don’t use social media or who accept that I’m “that person” they have to text instead of DM.

Someone whose phone number they actually have to ask for.

Yikes.

Two years ago, my husband and I picked up two young German hitchhikers in the Abel Tasman region of New Zealand. During the drive, we talked about this very topic. I shared my longing to disconnect and pursue something more real. The girl, no older than 22, responded emphatically. “But if you do that, you’d basically outcast yourself from the world. This is how we communicate now.”

She said it as though opting out would make me strange. Is that where we are? Forced to participate in soulless platforms that leave us emptier just to appear normal? To appear connected? To appear happy? Do we continue this endless assembly line of like-for-likes, competing with the Joneses, feeding curated narratives that pull us further from where our hearts long to live?

Or is it not that deep?

Maybe we love this. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe shallow interaction meets a need I don’t understand. Maybe most people are buffered by rich, nourishing real-life relationships, and that’s why social media remains fun and low-stakes for them.

Or maybe, as my real-life relationships dwindled, my online ones became more important to me than they ever should have been. I mistook proximity for intimacy and waited for them to follow me offline, when they never would.

What I know for sure is this. Social media now primarily serves as a memory bank for me. An online journal. A scrapbook. I post to remember. For myself. I scroll back through old photos and seasons and relive what once was. For now, that’s what keeps me from deleting it all.

In the meantime, I’ll keep sending cards, making phone calls, and reaching out personally, even if the most I receive in return is a “like.” I’ll keep choosing effort. I’ll keep being who I am, even when it hurts.

And I’ll keep hoping that someday we collectively decide we want more. That simply “liking” a wedding announcement or birth announcement isn’t enough. That people deserve real acknowledgment, real presence, real care.

We can do better.

Here’s to living more offline than on,

Rachel