Before you read Lance Ulanoff’s account of his attempt to take a vacation from social media for the holidays, keep in mind that he is Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable.
It’s his job to overshare, which he admits doing even while taking a two-week vacation in London. Throughout the trip, his Twitter, Instagram, and Vine followers seemed to cry out to him from the iPhone in his pocket, as if begging to see the interesting sites…and Ulanoff admits he was happy to share. Considering he’s passed the 40,000-tweet mark, and counts upwards of 600 Vine and 1,300 Instagram posts, that’s not surprising. So why take a break from social media for the holidays?
Ulanoff acknowledges that social media never sleeps, even during the holidays. And when he asked on Twitter and Facebook about whether anyone had plans to unplug from social media over the holidays, the topic didn’t get much traction.
Ulanoff wants to try to unplug from social media because he has been experiencing moments when he doesn’t want to share! But if he even checks his accounts, he feels like he must share. What would be the benefit of shunning social media anyway? “I could reengage with my wife and family,” he writes.
Actually, there’s a bigger reason why Ulanoff fears stepping away from social media, even for a little while. But you’ll have to read the article to find that out. He has promised, in writing, to take a social media holiday break from December 22 of this year to January 4, 2015. Will he succeed? Only his tweets will tell.
