Signing Off Social Media

I left social media for more than 30 days. I left because I realized that my thoughts were no longer entirely my own. The sanctity of my head had been violated. The worst part was that I allowed it to happen.

I permitted the app makers and advertisers to attempt (and in some cases succeed) in redirecting my thoughts, emotions, and intentions. Let’s call this what it is: mind control. 

My attention span had eroded. I could kill an hour scrolling deep into my Instagram feed searching for … what, exactly? I’m still not sure. I think I was looking for something to make me feel better when I should have been working toward feeling better. 

I had decided to take a break before I started reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, but the book sealed the deal. In fact, if it weren’t for my chosen line of work, I don’t think I’d be on social media at all, knowing what I know now.

The case for leaving social media

Paraphrasing Newport, we’re sold the notion that social media fosters connection and community-building. This is half true. The other half of the truth is that social media fosters addiction. Social media apps are painstakingly designed attention traps. They play off of our neurochemistry like dopamine-releasing drugs. The reasoning is simple: money. Social media companies make more money the more you interact with their products. Their apps are incentivized to be addicting.

The mental clarity of the past social-media-free month is almost too alluring to pass up, even for professional reasons. The past 30 days have been some of the happiest and most productive I can remember. I’ve spent quality time with my wife, finished several short stories, read hundreds of pages, and managed to complete enough work to take two luxurious weeks of vacation at the beach. My attention span, which traditionally has been one of my greatest assets, is back to pre-smartphone levels.

Why I chose to return

So, why am I back? If you’re like most of the people who read this blog, you’ve probably landed here after clicking on a social media link. Writers need to be where readers are. I started this blog with the intention of helping others by sharing the lessons I’ve learned the hard way. Those lessons are useless if they’re launched into the void.

Today’s lesson is that the way I was using social media was wasting my time, diluting my attention, and making me unhappy. Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe you can handle social media. You need to ask yourself two questions: 

1. What is social media doing to me?

2. How could I use social media better?

Here’s where I landed in thinking about those two questions. Maybe social media is doing nothing to you. I know now that it wasn’t working for me. Yet, I know that I need to be here (at least for the time being) to accomplish my goals. So, how do I make better use of social media? How do I use social media in a way that’s healthy and morally and/or ethically sound?

My new policy

Social media is now a part of my workday. I’ve blocked out time to respond to messages, check notifications, and post content, like the link that brought you to this blog post. Any other time of day, there’s nobody home. 

It would be hypocritical to write about the drawbacks of social media but simultaneously advocate for you to be on here. That’s why I’m giving you -- and I’ll be honest, me too -- the out of signing up for a mailing list. I’ll send you an email when new posts go up, and you’ll never have to be on social media to find this content ever again. Your privacy will be sacrosanct. I’ll never give away or sell your email address. 

The end goal is to amass enough newsletter subscribers so I no longer need to be on social media at all, and you no longer need to be on it to find my writing. You can sign up for the mailing list here.

What you should do next

Evaluate how you’re using social media, paying particular attention to how it affects your real-life, in-person interactions with people. The photographer Eric Pickersgill’s recent project, Removed, highlights the absurdity of our current relationship with technology. 

When I first saw Pickersgill’s photos, the hollowness of our relationship to our devices landed like a Thai kick to the body. I also thought about how our addiction could be an indicator of increasing narcissism. Photoshop out the phone and replace it with a mirror and the photos work just as well.

I think, however, that the most painful realization that I derived from this photo project was how easily I could have been on the other side of the lens, distracted, diluted, depressed, staring into my technological reflection and wondering why I feel the way I do. 

I’m done with that.

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No service.

I'm not one to complain about the advance of technology. I'm no Luddite. But I do worry about its pervasiveness.

As a kid and a teen, I'd spend at least a week every summer at Scout camp. Like a good portion of the early Millennials, I grew up during the inception of the mobile revolution. If you had a phone -- and only the adults had them -- it didn't get service on top of that mountain in upstate New York.

My parents couldn't keep tabs on me. Later on, I couldn't keep in touch with my girlfriend. And in so many ways, that was the point. For that one week, the cord that connected me to them was cut. I was forced to reckon with reality alone or with my peers. I did more growing up during those one-week intervals than I ever did during a school year.

I remember my first campfire. I was maybe six. I had helped build it, so it was all the more memorable. It was on a Cub Scout camping trip at the defunct KOA campground in my hometown. I found a dilapidated shed and peeled some rotten plywood from its floor and laid it on the woodpile. I remember staring into that fire until I was forced to go to sleep, the splintered edges of that plywood curling into long, orange fingers as the flames leaped into the starry August sky. There was something primal about the way that fire held my attention. I wanted to watch it more than any cartoon. I wanted to keep it going further and longer than any video game.

If you haven't noticed this feeling before, next time you're sitting by a campfire, you will. I don't think it's a feeling that technology ever will be able to conjure. It's profoundly human, and the thought of losing that feeling is profoundly terrifying.