On taking a social media break
this is not an airport, you do not need to announce your departure
So after I wrote last week’s newsletter on the social media wars of 2023, I realized the real war was within myself all along. Lol jk but also: I’m kind of serious. I’m officially on social media hiatus.
This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this. In 2018, after about 11 years of steady – ok, very heavy – usage, I quit using Twitter. I didn’t delete my account, but I walked away from it for 2.5 years. And when I came back, it was to use it only sporadically. I never again fell back into anything resembling like my old usage.
So I broke that habit, but I made up for it by spending too much time on Instagram. And then 2.5 years after I quit Twitter, I started working for Instagram. After spending 30+ years online and 15+ years immersed in social media, it felt like time for a real break.
(I’m still reading Reddit, but I came to Reddit sort of late so I don’t think of it as social media for myself so much as a place to read, learn, and occasionally comment.)
If you know me in person – I don’t like to say real life, because I think online is just as real as in person, only differently real, but more on that in a bit – you know I love to make sense of things. Love it! I’m always coming up with theories and ideas, and I almost always like to tell people about them because I’m a talking processor. The most effective way for me to make sense of all the data and ideas in my head is to talk it through it with someone. (This hasn’t always made me the most popular person because some people get annoyed, but let’s be real. That’s a them problem.) But lately, there’s almost been too much to make sense of. Too many upheavals, too many uncertainties, too much bad news, too many things.
Then I realized something that will be pretty stupidly obvious to some: When there’s too much data and information, sometimes you need to reduce the number of inputs. So I’m giving that a shot, and I have to say, I think it’s working. I’m a little lonelier in some ways, but weirdly, I’m also less lonely in other ways.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think the human psyche is meant to contend with everyone else’s exteriors to this degree, especially not from the privacy of our own messy interiors.
Now, before I go any further, let me be clear: I don’t believe that technology fundamentally worsens human relationships or is to blame for all of society’s ills. I don’t believe that technology and art or technology and communication or technology and anything are diametrically opposed or mutually exclusive in some fundamental way. I have a lifelong habit of being a little bit of a moderate, a little bit shades of grey, and I am no different in the question of technology. Technology has done both a lot of good and a lot of bad, usually in equal measure. Technology is made by humans and thus fraught with human error and bias. Technology forces us into specific modes of communication and gives us only rudimentary tools to attempt the most complex of human interactions. I think technology can be wonderful and foster incredible connections, and I also think technology can help improve our lives even as it makes them harder. I just don’t believe the companies that build this technology can truly give a shit about really doing the right thing in any fundamental way when they’re tech companies because tech companies have to answer to venture capital and the markets, and those entities care about growth at the expense of all else. They are the real world embodiment of Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors.
I remember when I first started at Meta, when it was called Facebook, and like when you join basically any tech company of a certain size, we had to listen to all these talks from different executives about the Magical and Brave New World we were now a part of. There was this one talk, given by someone I won’t name, that infuriated me. The speaker said that technology, including the technology the company builds, is fundamentally amoral – as in, it is neither moral or immoral. The issue of morality comes with how the technology is used. This person also said that if you disagree with this statement, then perhaps Facebook is not the place for you.
Now, if we were talking about a technological advancement like the refrigerator, I would agree. A refrigerator is, as technological advancements go, relatively amoral. If you use it to keep your food fresh, great. If you use it to store human remains, à la Jeffrey Dahmer, not great. But the idea that technology like Facebook, technology developed, designed, built, and refined by humans that alters how other humans communicate with one another – or don’t – and how they perceive themselves, each other, and society at large? I would not agree. In retrospect, maybe that speaker was right: Maybe Facebook is not for me.
A couple of weeks ago, I put a little pin in the idea that social media is, for better or worse, a form of global social infrastructure. That infrastructure has been developed with almost zero intent and with highly focused intent in varying measures. Neither Facebook nor Twitter launched with some grand idea to change and/or destroy democracy, along with the social lives of adolescents and their annoying families. Not only did neither of them have the same uses or goals, they didn’t even have the same fundamental models of operating. Here’s a good and very funny description of the two branches of social media dominated by Facebook and Twitter (it is also a savage takedown of Threads). The point is, our social lives have literally been disrupted by decidedly not amoral technology. This technology is built by people who, by and large, do not have a deep and nuanced understanding of how friendship and/or social lives actually work.1
And yet taking a break from social media is a weird thing to do because so much of our existence is now hopelessly intertwined with and dependent on this technology. It’s been mere days and already I have no idea what anyone is up to. I don’t think I’ve talked to people less than normal, but because I’m not looking at their stories or Bluesky posts or whatever, it feels like I’m interacting less with most of the people in my life. Maybe I am, but – here’s the kicker – maybe I’m just doing less passive consumption of content from or sharing to an audience of people I sort of know. Maybe I’m feeling less left out of things because I cannot see them, and maybe that’s for the best. Maybe what I don’t know actually can’t hurt me some of the time.
Online relationships are as real as the relationships I have with people I see in person, and I’ve always believed that. I miss being online. I took a photo the other day and didn’t know where to share it. When Carlos Alcaraz won Wimbledon today, I wanted to celebrate with others from the comfort of my own home (I confess, I went on Twitter for a second, but it was deeply dissatisfying). I miss elements of the social infrastructure. But I don’t miss the bad feelings that social media engenders in me. I don’t miss feeling like I am not enough or like my life isn’t enough. More than that, I don’t miss being faced with the knowledge that human relationships have been harnessed in the service of consumption.
This newsletter ended up in a much different place than I expected, but I’m okay with that. I don’t have a solution or a resolution or even a fancy kicker, because I’m still working all this out. Thanks for sticking with me.
Until next time.
Lxx
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Three recommendations from me, if recommendations are your thing:
Honestly, I recommend a social media break. Do it and see how it makes you feel. Then leave me a comment or send me a message and tell me, because I’m curious.
So I got one of these Muji fans and love it, but they appear to be sold out. However, if you don’t care how silly you look in public, or if you’d rather look silly than drenched in sweat, I also got one of these and oh my god hot garbage summers might never be the same.
Ok so I actually do have one browser tab open to an Instagram page, but it’s for the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which is not only an amazing organization to support but has the absolute best social media presence of any organization ever. Wonderful photos and videos, truly compelling captions, the works. Even if you don’t have an IG account, their stuff is highly recommended. As is adopting one (or more) of their animals!
And often don’t want to listen to the experts they hire to inform the company on these subjects, but that is a rant for another newsletter. The user researcher manifesto, coming soon to an inbox near you.
"Call me crazy, but I don’t think the human psyche is meant to contend with everyone else’s exteriors to this degree, especially not from the privacy of our own messy interiors." - This, right here.
I contemplate quitting this or that often, and most people who are on social do the same. It's become a sort of necessary evil, especially for people who work in marketing and adjacent fields.
I'll share a story that feels relevant to your thoughts here.
When we moved to Colorado a few years ago, I joined a couple of local Facebook groups to try and get the lay of the land, learn about good places to eat, local politics, contractor recommendations, etc. Not a bad use for Facebook, on its surface. Over time, I noticed that the people inhabiting these groups were aggressively negative in attitude and libertarian in values (which is not a compliment). I started thinking that these shitty attitudes were held by most people around me, and it colored my view of my adopted home state.
Three years later, and we moved back to Illinois. Having quit Facebook in 2020, I recently went back solely to monitor a couple of local groups for activism reasons. Guess who hangs out in those groups? Those same libertarian types with their same gripes and same disdain for any forms of social good at any level. As their shittiness started getting inside my head, I remembered my Colorado experience and realized that I do not and did not often encounter people who act like this in meatspace. But that personality tends to park itself in certain local groups and pee in the pools there.
I think people exercise more restraint about being shitty face-to-face. I know 2016 and COVID has changed that significantly, but I still believe this holds true.
Once I realized it was messing with my head again, I logged out of Facebook.
Like you, I don't think all technology is evil and we met on Twitter, so net positive, right? But I think so many of us are grappling with ideas of how much is too much, what are the best use cases for these networks, what are our friends who shitcanned it all experiencing--a friend is experiencing so much creative vibrancy since quitting all social, for example.
Sheldrick is THE BEST. We went to see friends in Cairo back in 2009 and took a 24 hr detour to Nairobi to visit my adopted baby elephant. Totally worth it.