Over a year into my absence from Facebook, I should tell you I cheat a little. I sometimes log onto my wife’s account and poke around. After all, it would be unfair, even arrogant, of me to leave Facebook, and expect my friends to repost pictures on WhatsApp, or go out and chop firewood to power the system that attaches photographs to emails.

And yet, when I think back to my Facebook days, I remember how, with close friends and family, social media interactions felt fake. We might start talking in comments but would soon peel off into personal messages, email or even a phone call, where things felt more “real”.

But Facebook worked well as an initiator, and without it, WhatsApp helps. Though it’s “easy”, I like how personal it is. And with family, it’s a great way to keep in touch as trips unfold.

But when the inner circle uses WhatsApp to connect over life events such as birthdays, anniversaries, new jobs or condolences, I blanch. Am I being old-fashioned? These events, especially the landmark numbers, are a great time to renew relationships (often via reminiscing). For example, as friends and cousins turn 40, it feels good to reach out in more solid ways. My wife and I recently hit 10 years married, and that felt very special to us. With immediate family at least, it certainly did not feel like a time for WhatsApp.

And then there are the times we use social media to pretend to be in touch with someone when we really aren’t. Everyone likes to see what you’re doing, but the inner circle deserves to know how you’re feeling. Everyone likes to know where you’ve gone, but the inner circle should hear what you learnt, how you changed. These deeper interactions don’t work on social media, but because we’re so intertwined on them, email can seem redundant.

Makings of a marriage meltdown

I was there when they talked about the death of letter writing, and I feel like we’ve gone through the death of personal email without really talking about it. I’m reminded of this by A. who had been in constant social media contact with her close friend, but hadn’t known she was enduring a marriage meltdown. A. believed that if they’d been in email contact as they used to be, it would have been discussed, and not just because email is more conducive to sharing.

A. believed that whenever the friend felt low enough to need to reach out, she would post on social media instead. The shaky affirmations would be like ego espresso shots that prevented her from seeking more robust and powerful support — such as by sharing with a loving, understanding, all-accepting old friend.

It made sense to me, because the lower my psychological resources, the greater my drive to climb onto a wobbly world-broadcast soapbox and — in effect — ask my social media circle to give me a bit of a boost. The trouble with depending on that is, they don’t react in ways you can control, and aren’t around very long.

The best way to boost flagging psychological health is to appeal to the only person who is always there for you, and yet, because they’re not actually on your friend’s list, you forget to call on them. While the man in the mirror might sometimes need some external help, the primary source of your strength should come from finding the “like yourself” buttons and clicking on those, however its done — whether spending no-electronics time with your family or running ultra-marathons or baking cookies for the neighbours.

Or writing long emails to friends and family.

Credit: Gautam Raja is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles.