Tackling Social Media.

Tackling the Great Monster.

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There are certain things which if someone asked me my honest opinion I’d suggest strongly against doing — smoking, drinking more than occasionally … and honestly, getting on the social media hamster wheel.

Today’s post is an important one, and a commitment I’m making publicly to be less online — but it will also try to point out some of the many ways social media makes our lives worse, how you can get off it, and how this can make your life better.

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Social media is much like alcohol: any reasonable person can tell you some reasons why social drinking is so good, and anyone can tell you that good has come from social media — I made a career on it, and met my partner via it! The issue is that using social media is a dangerous thing. At an extreme end it might radicalize you, alienate you from your community (ironically, social media often enables incredibly antisocial behaviour), and even actively teach you things that are not true.

The moment where I went from an on-and-off Facebook user to permanently off the service was when I logged on, and the first thing Facebook served to me was a video of two people getting into a fist fight on a plane … which was clearly fake. It was a real blinders off moment where it was clear what this service exists to do: rile people up, and get them to rile other people up.

I don’t think this applies to most people who regularly use social media, but the effects are bad for casual users (myself included). While, like with alcohol (which I do not — fun fact — partake in), you can probably have a healthy relationship, having a relationship is still probably inviting catastrophe when you find yourself in a bad state of mind, or a bad place in life, and suddenly can no longer keep up those boundaries.

I think it’s OK to change your relationship with social media, not only because … it’s a product, but also because it has changed. Instagram for example used to be a nice place to share good photos; it is now an ad delivery mechanism with TikTok, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger duct taped on.

The Effects.

For me, I can think of a ton of different effects social media has had on me, but probably the most pernicious of all is just how it takes my time, which is by far the thing I value most. It would easily be possible for me to sink a few hours a day into Twitter or even Instagram, and it was never particularly well-spent time. Sure, maybe I learned a few things, or saw a few interesting pictures, or had some okay conversations — that’s what fuels these platforms, there are germs of good — but most of it was ads, arguing, bots, and weird behaviour and engagement that nobody would engage in in real life.

I think it’s worth really emphasizing this: in many ways, social media thrives on us behaving and engaging in ways we wouldn’t in real life. On Instagram that might mean boasting about out lifestyle, or uploading several videos of your life all day long (a great way to ruin your actual experiences is to be thinking about filming and actually filming them), and on Twitter (or Bluesky, which is just Twitter with different politics) it might be arguing with people who you’d never even engage with in real life — and of course Twitter encourages people who might just have slightly odd opinions to take those to absolutely crazy levels, and try to fight other people over them. Theres a lot of talk these days about real life social dysfunction, and it’s hard not to imagine that being driven in large part by the training on how to behave we get on social media, which tells us to moderate ourselves less, be more hyperbolic, and be more aggressive.

The Death of Partying in the U.S.A.—and Why It Matters

Social media is obviously many-faceted and not all platforms are equally bad. One problematic trend is that biographical lifestyle content has gone from YouTube, where long-form content allows for a more complete picture and nuance (not to suggest watching vlogs is good for you), to short-form video, where any average video is probably about something like the new apartment someone bought, or their luxury vacation — and no context around life circumstances are provided. It seems that over time social media has become more and more exploitative of creators and more and more driven by pure engagement, leaving us with platforms like TikTok which are indistinguishable from human information force-feeding.

So much of social media revolves around comparison (a topic I’m going to write a post about), and while I’ve already sort of alluded to my views on this issue being nuanced (noticing a trend?) I do think the sort of shallow comparison encouraged by social media is particularly unhealthy.

I also just think social media kind of plays to our animal instincts. It’s sort of like reality television, smut, or Doritos — I feel like if you’re reading this you’ve probably self-reflected on that to at least some degree, but it’s worth reiterating that usually things that play off our most base urges are at especially high risks to be exploitative.

All of this comes together to form today’s leading social media platform - TikTok, which I thankfully have almost entirely avoided. Unfortunately, TikTok’s entire model has infected Instagram, and even worse (there was more to lose) YouTube. And it’s got all of the bad stuff, it’s easily a huge time sink as there is no concept of selecting a video with a set duration, and then choosing another, instead it’s an endless stream of content meant to be impossibly engaging and sticky. It naturally also encourages short contextless content, which is going to lead to unhealthy comparison. And most of all, the frequently shocking, extreme, or dramatic videos are all about arousing the animal instincts.

What I’ve Done.

So then, what have I done to change my relationship with social media and to try to make that healthier?

Well for one, I’ve removed the worst of social media off of my phone entirely. Want to use Twitter or Bluesky? — I’ll need to open a computer, and by the time I do that I may well have reflected that what I wanted to say wasn’t actually important. I have kept Mastodon (I use Moshidon) on my device because it allows a sort of slow engagement with microblogging that feels less unhealthy — Mastodon also doesn’t have the crazy nuance-killing character limit, and the lack of an edit button, plus people who are on Mastodon are there because they want something better and different, and so while I don’t have a lot of conversations on the service compared to what I would have on, say … Bluesky, the interactions are much higher quality.

I do still have Instagram, but removing it from my home screen means that opening it is not reflexive like it once was. A few extra taps and swipes have a surprising impact on my use of the app.

Something that inspired me to write this post is that I tried to have a better relationship with Instagram by creating a personal account where I only followed, and allowed following from people I know. Unfortunately, in modern Instagram that doesn’t mean a space for just you and people you know, and instead you just get inundated on your feed with recommended content.

Something else I did was put a phone use widget on my home page. This forces me to regularly see how much I am using my phone — and probably social media apps (though YouTube and the app for my Concept2 rowing machine do thankfully sometimes appear at the top). This has an obvious impact on my phone (and therefore social media) use, which has been almost cut in half since I started doing all these things.

But, what helps more with the phone is … just not having it. It’s usually close by, if I go on a walk I need only head home to grab it, and when I’m at home it will be on the charger in another room, but like with moving and removing apps, this adds critical friction which together with my modest willpower is sufficient to massively reduce my social media use.

How My Life Has Changed.

While I’ve yet to totally kick the habit, I have gone from social media-holic to a casual social media user. This has freed up hours of my time every day, made me less stressed and anxious, and I think also helped me think more clearly (something about social media encourages a sort of squirrel-brained mind racing all over the place state).

Of course, as I’ve already pointed out, there is some value in social media, and so it’s worth asking what substitutes I’ve found to try to unlock this.

One big thing is group chats. I have a main group chat based loosely around a major personal interest with about 10 friends, and then a lot of smaller ones with my partner and our couple friends — these groups let us make plans and share things without entering the algorithmic hell that is Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

I also find myself using Google Photos more and more. I’ve talked about Google and my desire to get off their products over time, but in this case it’s a real lesser-of-two-evils situation. By using Google Photos to share and look back on old photos instead of Instagram, I’m avoiding getting dragged down that rabbit hole.

Of course, much of the time and mental bandwidth I’ve freed up has gone to non-digital things. For example, I’ve been spending a lot more time walking recently, and I’ve also been spending more time with family, reading more, and of course, just doing more productive work like writing blog posts!

I'm sure I could have an even healthier relationship with social media, but I'm quite happy with all the progress I've made and I think the results have already been substantial. Make sure you stay tuned because I'm sure I'll write more about this process as I continue to go through it, but also, as I learn and realize more about social media and my relationship with it.