I went to Siberia to escape social media - and learned that you can never leave

Enjoy your time away from that churning water wheel of hype, Ed Sheeran. But you’ll be back

Ed Sheeran (Getty Images)

In 2011 I exiled myself, quite literally, to Siberia. I’d just broken up with my boyfriend of four years; the overdraft of my graduate bank account was generous and untouched; and, like most oversensitive people faced with a loss, I just wanted to disappear. Specifically, I wanted to disappear to an isolated and desolate place that reflected how I felt inside.

There is no desolation on Facebook. Instead, there are hundreds of examples of people’s best façades, polished and primed for public consumption: the newborn baby sleeping peacefully in pristine clothes, rather than the projectile vomit at 5am; the night out with your best friends after the end of a relationship, drunkenly grinning into the camera, rather than the Tuesday afternoon where you have to excuse yourself from your desk to have a silent, pathetic cry in the toilets.

My trip to Russia happened back when a change in one’s relationship status appeared across the Facebook timelines of everyone you knew; it felt like my news had been publicly announced by the town crier. Minutes after “in a relationship” changed to “single”, a deluge of sympathetic messages descended. My phone began to light up with texts from vague acquaintances hungry for gossip. I sat completely still in front of a computer screen, watching the notifications pile up, overwhelmed. Hours later, I’d booked that ticket to St Petersburg.

Five weeks on the Trans-Siberian Railway couldn’t heal a broken heart, but it did, at least, remove me from this torrent of gnawing faux-concern. As I rattled through an endlessly bare landscape occasionally punctuated by abandoned Soviet factories, I found the space to work out some of my thornier emotions.

Jumping off the train to trade chewing gum from Moscow for punnets of freshly picked strawberries after a four-day stint ensconced in my cabin became the most pressing issue of the entire day. Needless to say, when a feral pack of dogs chased me down the tracks in the village outside Omsk – the city of Dostoyevsky’s imprisonment – I wasn’t concerned about whether my ex had his arm around some girl in his profile picture.

I knew that I couldn’t disappear forever, of course. But disappearing used to be possible back in those halcyon days when ending a relationship genuinely came with the risk and the relief of knowing you would never see that person again. If your lover had betrayed you, you could go home and write crap poetry while indulging in an uninterrupted marathon of Leonard Cohen’s least uplifting tunes, safe in the knowledge that your rhyming couplets would get no further than your bedroom door.

Today you can safely bet you’ll see your ex again, regularly: in pictures of their nights out, having carefree fun with friends while you’re still in the “solo vodka stage”; singing karaoke at the office Christmas party; making new friends on five-star holidays; and, eventually, inevitably, happy in the arms of someone else, grinning our at you from a beautifully composed image of their wedding day. With networks like these, who needs enemies?

Social media is hardest on the broken-hearted, but the truth is it’s hard on everyone. That’s why each new week carries with it the announcement that some celebrity or another is “leaving social media” or “taking a break”. This week it’s singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, who says he’s sick of living life “through a screen”. At 24 years old, it might seem like digital fatigue has hit him prematurely. But with more than 16 million followers on Twitter alone, the whole charade must have become less like harmless fun and more of a dominating force in his life.

The likes and the favourites come in as thick and fast as the down-votes and the Twitter mobs, casting judgement on every little pronouncement. With each joking aside, you could attract a mob baying for blood or a rally of adoring fans. Dr Matt Taylor, the scientist who wore an unsavoury shirt emblazoned with semi-naked women on TV while discussing his work, is one of the most conflicting examples of someone falling foul of that mob. The criticisms of his choice of attire were valid: sexism is real; objectification is rampant; women already find it hard enough to be respected in – or, indeed, hired for – scientific jobs. But footage of him crying as he apologised for doing wrong was uncomfortable to watch. He’d suffered days of relentless abuse. It felt merciless.

And then there are the people who unintentionally manufacture their own downfall, sleepwalking into serious trouble under the illusion that they are posting in a private, protected place. A 32‑year-old mother was prosecuted this week for “sending obscene photos” after she found a video of her partner cheating on her with an 18-year-old while she was pregnant. She shared it on Facebook in a fit of pique; in a couple of ill-considered clicks, one woman became a victim of revenge porn, while the other ended up with a criminal record.

Cases such as this expose the darker side of social media, but there’s much to celebrate in its democratisation of voices and views – especially those which otherwise might never have been heard beyond their kitchen tables. My own career in journalism arose from a free blog that I started with my friend while living in her airing cupboard. I often worship at the altar of social networks myself.

Nevertheless, chasing approval and dodging digital bullets is an exhausting practice. It can easily become all-consuming. Is it any wonder celebrities are reaching their limits with Twitter earlier and earlier?

To Sheeran, who has said he is “buggering off for a while” to travel the world – and whose travels will be far more luxurious than mine – I’d say this: enjoy your time away from that churning water wheel of hyperbole. Enjoy a life temporarily disconnected, away from the thousands of fans turning their phones towards your face, the cameraphone army with whom Benedict Cumberbatch took umbrage. But don’t expect anything to have changed by the time you come back.