Our online lives are completely different from our offline personas. But a lot of times, our online posts still reflect a small portion of our lives. Now that you’re on the right track, what do you do about your online accounts? Do you retain your old Facebook and Twitter accounts? Or do you delete all traces completely?
Spring Cleaning Matters
If you used to post drunken updates on Twitter or incoherent statuses on Facebook, you might want to delete some posts, unfollow a few people, and click the unfriend button. It’s not about forgetting the past in order to move forward. At this point in time, cleaning up your online accounts will greatly help you to avoid relapse caused by certain triggers — photos, statuses, or seeing people you used to hang out with.
Hold On
However, if you were careful enough not to constantly update folks about your adventures and escapades on Facebook or Twitter, you can probably get away with retaining your old accounts.
Remember Why You’re Doing It In The First Place
Simply deleting old social media accounts just for the heck of it might not be such a good idea. So you have to understand why you’re doing it in the first place.
Remove Triggers
Let’s face it, we all need social media accounts nowadays. It’s rare for someone to completely get away from social media. Although this could be a good thing, remember that seeing posts about old friends and acquaintances could trigger a lot of emotions and memories that you would rather forget about. Although there is a time and place for remembering the old times, now is probably not the time to do so. So it’s relatively safer for you if you rebuild your life slowly by starting with brand new social media accounts.
Future Prospects
A lot of employers check out prospective employees’ social media accounts. If you don’t want to sabotage future endeavors, it could be a good idea to start with a blank slate and show people the good side of you that they never saw before.
Remember that cleaning up old social media accounts doesn’t mean that you want to forget about the past. It’s simply about removing possible triggers and opening up new avenues for your future self. When it comes to social media accounts, it’s very easy to be taken the wrong way and be misunderstood. Just take note that cleaning up online accounts only mean that you want to start anew but you still know and understand how the past has shaped your present identity. You should be in a good place before deleting old posts and/or accounts. Simply deleting for the sake of forgetting is an ineffective method of moving on.