The Old-Fashioned Way

 Today, I left Facebook. And Instagram. I’ve been thinking about doing so for a while. In fact, I had got as far as deactivating both accounts, but only because I use Messenger quite a bit and if you delete rather than deactivate, then Messenger is deleted, too. 

Today, I deleted it. And goodness me, was that an effort! Facebook does not want you to leave. It takes grit, patience and determination to delete a Facebook account. You have to follow a tricky path through the incomprehensible layers of your account. It’s not a case of simply pressing a delete button, job done. Even now, I have 30 days remaining until the account is deleted properly, in case I change my mind. Pah! I’ve made a note in my diary to have a little Facebook divorce party on the 30th day.

I’ve had enough of social media. Or should that be ‘anti-social’ media? It seems to me it does more harm than good these days. But, because I have a handful of family and friends that I have Messenger chats with on a regular basis, I needed a replacement message service, so I joined WhatsApp. I used to be on WhatsApp two years ago, but left it because of a couple of, what shall I call them - snarky incidents. When I downloaded the app this morning it asked me if I wanted to retrieve my old conversations. Why would I want to do that? Dragging stuff up from the past is never a good thing. I declined that offer.

And then I set about contacting my nearest and dearest to let them know I was now only text, WhatsApp, telephone or letter writing contactable. Almost, but not quite, the old-fashioned way. I still have a couple of people to get hold of. My job for this evening. 

A friend phoned me immediately to ask if I was okay. I said I was, indeed, all ticketty-boo and hunky-dory. That I felt the need to draw the line under some bits of my life and to revamp how I was doing things. I no longer want to be involved in the whole social media culture. It is not me. The last two years have been rocky, but I see things differently now. My friend said she understood. She, too, has taken a step back from all that stuff. And then she went on to tell me a sweet story.

I’d sent her a letter a week or so ago. I do like letter writing. Always have. And she said, this friend, that the letter I’d sent her was sitting on her mantelpiece. And when her six year old granddaughter had visited, she had picked up the letter and said, ‘What’s this, Nan?’

‘It’s a letter,’ said my friend, and she explained to her granddaughter what a letter was, and what it all entailed, this letter-writing malarkey. She said her granddaughter was absolutely fascinated and very excited by the whole concept that you could communicate with someone without using a computer or mobile phone. And that when a visitor came to the house, she took them to the mantelpiece to show them the letter and said, ‘Look! This is a letter!’

Well! How lovely. And yet how sad. That there’s a whole generation of children who have no concept of old-fashioned letter writing, who have never seen or received a letter through the post. I said to my friend, ‘Shall I write her a letter, so she can have her own?’ And my friend said, yes, that would be a lovely thing to do and that her granddaughter would be very excited to receive her own letter. And so, this afternoon, I did.

It was a couple of pages of waffle about Nell, gardening and Peter Rabbit, on notepaper printed with little birds. I put the letter inside another envelope, along with a note to my friend. I left the letter unsealed so my friend could read it first if she wanted to. It will be up to her if she wants to pass it on to her granddaughter. Sadly, as an ex-teacher who has sat through much training, I am too well-aware of the whole safe-guarding issues that govern our society these days. 

But it felt like a nice thing to do. Perhaps the granddaughter will be inspired to start letter-writing herself? Find a couple of pen-friends, as I did when I was a child. Write to elderly relatives, or friends she meets on holidays? Or just write for the sheer fun of it, because letter writing is a fine form of communication. And the rush of joy I get when I receive a handwritten envelope through the post will never leave me. It’s a pity that letter-writing is, it seems, becoming a dying art.