Week 1: Realizing Social Media’s Habitual Nature
During the late evening hours of New Year’s Eve 2018, after
the kids were in bed, I took some time to make a few final scrolls through
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I didn’t mention or post that I was taking
January off; I wanted to disappear in silence.
And that’s what I did. I deleted the Facebook app. I deleted
the Instagram app. I logged out from all accounts on my phone’s browser (which
was where most of the Twitter damage was done).
I went to bed at 10pm, truly looking forward to starting
2019 on a social media-less foot.
So, naturally, the 10-month-old baby woke up screaming at
about 11:30pm, and wouldn’t go back to sleep until about 1:30am. I didn’t
intend to ring in the new year on a conscious level, and yet there I was,
rocking a baby to sleep when the clock struck midnight. I’ll admit that my
first instinct was to check Facebook. Or Instagram. Anything. I didn’t even
want to, really. Just my rebellious human nature coming through there. But I
held fast and just closed my eyes.
And so that first temptation passed without incident.
____________________
In the days that followed during week 1, I wanted to check
in on my accounts to see how friends and family had rung in the new year.
Instead, I texted a few close friends and had nice “conversations” that way.
Much better than scrolling through a feed and not interacting at all — which is
generally what happens.
The most interesting thing about this first week was what
not having those apps on my phone did to those habitual boredom-busting
tactics. Normally, I’d unlock my phone, and almost instinctively tap on the
blue “f” or the purplish camera icon, just to see if any notifications came in,
or if anyone in my network had some major life event.
Now, I’d unlock my phone and just sort of stare at it, not
really sure what to do. Eventually, I’d click around on various apps
— weather, games, Amazon (shopping, not reading) — and quickly get
bored and shut ‘er down.
On social media, you don’t have to make any decisions
about what to do. The infinite scroll keeps you engaged for . . .
well, ever. When you open a weather app, you check the weather for about 10
seconds, and that’s it. When you shop online, you have to intentionally look
for something; endlessly clicking on related products gets old pretty quickly.
Without those infinite scrolls beckoning for your attention, you realize that
your phone isn’t such an alluring device. It’s just a little brick that’s
supposed to make your life easier; it’s not supposed to
enslave your attention.
(Games of course offer plenty of time-wasting opportunity,
but something about being 30 has made me sort of cringe at myself when I play
games on my phone, so it doesn’t happen too much, and I in fact just recently
deleted the last of those games. I’m a grown man for crying out loud!)
The Lesson: This first insight is in truly learning that
social media is much more of a mindless habit — and a very
strongly ingrained one — than a pleasurable or fulfilling activity. We do
it out of compulsion rather than intention.
Week 2: Missing the Benefits of Social Media
Week 2 started as a breeze, really. To be honest, I had been
turned off by social media for a while, and it felt pretty easy to step away
from it. To my mind, this meant I was actually quite ready for a break and just
needed an excuse to do it. Perhaps that’s all you need too
— an excuse to cut it out of your life.
The reality of the world we live in means that I wasn’t
actually missing much. My wife would text or email me memes, which was almost
more of a fun and personal way to encounter them. Hangouts with friends would
inevitably bring up newsy topics that I hadn’t really been privy to. And
sometimes, things just fully slipped over my head and turned out to be entirely
unimportant. (I had no awareness of that Gillette ad and the mushroom of
reaction it caused until, like all flash-in-the-pan sparks of outrage, it had
almost completely disappeared from the pop culture spotlight, leaving nothing
of real significance behind.) It was nice to run into these things tangentially
in the course of conversation rather than having spent hours online.
But then, I ran into a few instances where being on social
media — particularly Facebook — would actually have been beneficial.
One morning I was texting with a good friend about biscuits
and gravy. Weird, I know, so a little bit of context: I was having some at
home, and back in our college days this friend and I would have boatloads of
the stuff together. Little did I know that his daughter was actually in the ICU
at that very moment. Had I been on social media, I would have known, and I
wouldn’t have texted about biscuits and gravy. I only knew about the sick
daughter because my wife said something, and I ended up feeling like a bit of a
cad (though it is possible he welcomed the silly distraction). I then of course
texted him that we were thinking about their family and would do anything we
could to help; I also called after realizing that texting wasn’t quite the
right medium for conveying those thoughts.
In a similar narrative, I had a different friend from
college with a young son who’d been dealing with cancer for much of 2018. Ten
years out of college, we weren’t close enough to be on texting or calling
terms, but I was certainly interested in what was going on with his family.
Without being on social media, I was missing those updates on how he and his
kid were doing. (The little guy is now doing very well and pretty much has a
clean bill of health!)
Facebook, for the enormous unethical cesspool that it is,
actually provides some benefit to my life; it’s not fully just mindless
entertainment. I can keep up with people who are important to me without having
to send a dozen “Hey what’s going on?” texts. If you cull your friends list to
just those you truly care about (rather than those you barely know or people
you only follow because you sort of like to hate their posts), you’ll end up
with a newsfeed that provides some value.
The real trick with social media is actually weighing those
benefits vs. the costs. Before my fast, the amount of time spent on Facebook
was not in line with what I was getting out of it. My time on Twitter and
Instagram were in the same boat. I was spending too much life —
in Thoreau’s words — on the minuscule benefit I was getting. So after the
fast, as I’ll dig into a little later, I ditched Twitter completely and reduced
my time on Instagram and Facebook to better match the benefit they were
providing.
The Lesson: Social media does have
actual benefits; it takes a break, though, to realize what they are. Once
you’ve had a break, and found some of those real benefits, you can go back to
it in a far healthier, and assuredly less time-consuming way. After my fast, I
quickly came to realize I could legitimately keep up with the more significant
updates my friends’ and family post on social media in just 10-15 minutes per
week.
Week 3: Dealing With Boredom
The novelty of the fast was quickly wearing off by week 3. I
was finding myself more often in the throes of boredom. At first, the fast was
kind of exciting — almost a self-righteous feeling of knowing I wasn’t
wasting my life on scrolling. But by week 3 that feeling was waning. I noticed
it mostly while waiting — waiting in line anywhere, waiting for my young
son to finish going to the bathroom, waiting 5 minutes for my pour over to
finish up at the coffee shop, waiting at Walmart for a tire to be patched (I
forgot to bring reading material), waiting for the gas tank to fill up . .
.
These small bits of time began to feel excruciatingly long —
embarrassingly so, actually. What did it say about me, I wondered, that I get
achingly bored after just a couple minutes with nothing to do?
I quickly realized that life offers plenty of
waiting, and social media is seemingly the perfect antidote —
which is why those companies are some of the world’s most valuable. There’s
always something new and it doesn’t take any of what I call “ramping up” to get
into. (With reading, for example, it can take a few minutes to get into the
flow of it, but many times the wait you’re in the midst of only lasts that
long.) Social media can be accessed and de-accessed in mere seconds, and the
result is no boredom ever again. In theory, at least. Of course you
still get bored with your feeds, you just don’t realize it, because you keep on
mindlessly scrolling.
The
problem is that boredom can actually be good for you. It fosters
thinking. Real thinking. With your brain! What a novel idea. I
know that sounds silly, but it really is a bit unique in our world. Instead of
diverting to social media with every minute that doesn’t have an allocated
activity, I’ve learned to try to actively be thinking about something
— planning my day/week, thinking through a decision that needs to be made,
“writing” in my head and working out ideas, or even just plain zoning out.
While I’m still bored when waiting around in line, and it’s still sometimes a
little painful, I’ve come to embrace it as best I can. And my mind truly feels
more focused — less scattered and more on top of things — because of
it.
The Lesson: Embrace the boredom. Use it to
think about something. Or not. It may be painful, but your brain will
thank you. If nothing else, keeping your phone put away while waiting for stuff
will break the hold that your phone has over your every spare moment (and
those spare moments are dang valuable — if used intentionally).
Week 4: A New Philosophy of Social Media & General Phone Use
As my experiment was coming to a close, I started to think
seriously about how to let social media back into my life. Cal Newport
accurately writes in Digital
Minimalism that as consumers we just sort of slid into using these
services and apps. They seemed to offer some benefit and some entertainment, so
there wasn’t a need to be all that thoughtful and intentional about their use.
But now, a decade or so after their introduction, we’ve seen how much time and
attention those devices and services can take from us. It’s time to step back
and think critically about the role they should play in our lives — to develop
a real philosophy around our use of technology.
Newport argues for putting pretty stringent “rules” in place
for yourself when it comes to social media and device usage. Make them as
specific and in-depth as is necessary — setting
time limits on things and limiting your access (with other apps,
like Freedom,
if needed). The small caveat is that if you’re naturally pretty disciplined
about this stuff, you may not need to be as specific. This is the case with me;
after making a living on the internet for the last 6 years, I’ve had ample
practice in self-discipline in that particular realm. So my own rules didn’t
need to be so hard and fast, but yours very well may.
What I came up with:
1. I would reinstall Instagram on my phone, but only use
it to post
pics 1-2 times per week (of books I’m reading, some of my baking
creations, and weekend hikes). For me, it provides hiking/cooking inspiration
and some beneficial personal branding without the vitriol found on Twitter and
Facebook. I really wish Instagram was easier to post to from a laptop/desktop,
but oh well. I’d spend no more than a few minutes every 2-3 days scrolling.
2. I would not reinstall Facebook on my phone. I’d
use it only on my computer, for no more than a few minutes every other day.
When I see something I want to “like” or comment on, I’ll shoot a text or an
email instead. I want social media to be a supplement for my
social interactions, not a replacement. I’ll occasionally post pics
of the kids, because that’s what my family and close friends most like to see.
(I do also really enjoy using the “On This Day” feature, which provides a nice
dose of nostalgia from pics you posted on that day in years past.)
3. I would abandon Twitter altogether. It was
clear during my fast that I received no actual benefit from it, other than
stress- and eye-roll-inducing news items. I also came to realize that things
that seemed important on Twitter — from “news” to overwrought outrage at
various things — weren’t actually important at all in the real world.
4. I would buy a cheap smartwatch to give me
notifications of texts and work emails. I’d always been mostly in the
hater camp when it comes to smartwatches, so this came as a surprise even to
me, but as I thought about it more, it made more and more sense. Part of my
checking my phone so much was to see texts and important work emails that came
through. My wife works in health care, and we like to text throughout the day
when we can, and she often only has a few spare minutes at a time. So it’s
important to me to see things from her right when they come in. Same goes for
the occasional work email that requires immediate attention. That doesn’t
happen too often, but when it does, I want to be on my toes. So, I ended up
checking my phone a lot just to see if there were new texts or emails, which
more often than not led to other time-wasting activities. In getting a cheap
smartwatch that gives my wrist a little vibration on incoming texts and work
emails, I can know within a second or two if something needs attention and if I
need to reach for my phone or not. Pretty dang handy, actually.
The Lesson: Take the time to really think about your
philosophy — and even specific rules — about your social media and
smartphone usage.
Concluding Thoughts
My month off of social media was far more insightful than I
thought it would be. After being away for 4 weeks, it oddly felt like it would
be more work to jump fully back into the fray and keep up with
what was going on. It sounded exhausting, actually. I’m now far more intent on
using my phone for thoughtful, purposeful actions rather than letting it control
how I use my time.
A month after coming up with the rules above, I can
emphatically say it’s all worked without a hitch. I actually now just naturally
get bored after more than a couple minutes on Facebook and Instagram every few
days — a result that many of the social media fasters profiled in Digital
Minimalism experienced as well. I know that sounds sort of
holier-than-thou, but it’s the honest-to-goodness truth. And the smartwatch has
been surprisingly useful; I’m not reaching for my phone nearly as much, so my
overall usage of it has gone down drastically (to less than half of what it was
before, according to Apple’s Screen Time app). It’s made a significant,
appreciable difference in my life.
Everyone uses (and perhaps struggles with) social media and
phone usage in different ways. While I think everyone should
take a social media fast — of at least 30 days — what you find out about
yourself and your digital consumption will vary from my own results. My lessons
were very much individual to me; whether or not they relate to you will depend
on your own social media habits, and the particular parts of it you’d like to
see change.
The whole point is that I wouldn’t have learned any of this
stuff without that fast. So the only prescriptive part of this article is to
implore you to take your own 30-day break from social media and other
time-wasting apps. As Newport argues, it’s only in temporarily wiping the slate
clean, that you can figure out what really matters and what’s really important
when it comes to your devices and apps. Then you can truly know what you want
to re-introduce into your life, and be able to use what you do bring back in an
intentional, fully conscious, life-enhancing-rather-than-life-squandering way.
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