Like many others, I have a complicated relationship with social media these days. As a kid, I remember thinking Facebook was the coolest thing ever. I could talk to my friends... ON THE INTERNET??! It was mind-blowing, and after using it for a while, I couldn't help but imagine all of the wonderful things that this network of connected computers could do. Now, however, the Internet is a different place, and I have concerns about the way people use it.

Since that blissful first foray into the online world, I've found myself holding very different opinions on social media at various points in my life. These have ranged from thinking social media was relatively pointless and benign to wondering if it could possibly be the worst thing humanity has ever created. Lately, I have been working as a freelance photographer, which makes some kind of social media presence feel like a necessity. For many years prior to that, I barely used social media, and I often wish I could go back to that. As of now, I have a more nuanced opinion of social media, but I do believe that the largest platforms are fundamentally broken and that the world is a worse place because of the state they're in.

A few months ago, I reached a point where my social media-related habits were completely paralyzing me. I wasn't working with any kind of regularity, nor was I able to motivate myself to look for work or start any of the numerous personal projects (like this blog) that I had been trying to get off the ground. I wasn't accomplishing anything, I wasn't living a life anywhere near the one I wanted to, and it felt like I was constantly at war with my own mind.

There were other factors at play in my life beyond an addiction to social media, but my relationship with these platforms (and other technologies) was a serious problem that I had to address. There were so many things I wanted to do, but I felt like I literally couldn't make myself do them. When I tried to sit down to write, or learn to paint, or read a book, I would quickly get frustrated and convince myself to "take a break," which usually meant jumping on Instagram, YouTube, or Reddit for "a little while." My time melted away, and I hated myself for letting this happen again.

I have noticed similar behavior in the people in my life, too. During hangouts, friends and family members will periodically pick up their phone and "check out" for a time. It tends to make me feel insecure if I'm trying to spend time with someone whose mind seems to be elsewhere. To be clear, I'm not trying to sound like I, personally, should be the center of attention or that my insecurities are their responsibility. I understand that people have other things going on in life. I also don't blame them; after all, phones and the apps on them are literally engineered to make you look at them as often as possible. It makes me sad, though, because we all have limited time to spend with people we care about and on things we enjoy, and I don't think we should allow social media and tech companies to cut into that.

In an effort to improve my relationships and my own mental health, I decided to make a change. And let me tell you: I'm glad I did. Since taking steps to reduce my time on social media (and on my phone in general), I have noticed a considerable improvement in my patience and ability to focus. I can read books again!

Social media is not without its benefits, obviously, but there are issues so deeply woven into the business models of these companies and the culture of our modern world that it would either take drastic, heavy-handed regulation or a mass user exodus to fix them. The latter has seemingly begun to happen recently due to the ever-intensifying political culture war happening in the United States. During the 2024 election cycle, Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), leveraged his position and the platform to actively push MAGA politics on X users. After Trump was elected, Mark Zuckerberg signaled his willingness to play ball as well, ending fact-checking on Meta platforms including Facebook and Threads, removing trans and nonbinary messenger themes, and releasing a video claiming that these new policies, which are suspiciously in line with MAGA ideology, were being enacted in the name of "free expression." I won't talk much about this topic here, but I do encourage you to read more on it because, frankly, that claim is bullshit. Regardless, these actions understandably upset a number of people and many have left the platforms.

This blog post probably won't fix the problems facing the Internet, but I hope that sharing some of my thoughts and experiences will at least help you think more consciously about the way you use social media. In writing this, I realize I am kind of late to the party. More people are writing about this topic every day, many of whom are much more qualified than myself. I encourage you to seek out other perspectives as well. Despite that, I hope that something in these words resonates with you and convinces you to take steps toward a less connected life.

Acknowledging My Addiction

Despite my relatively low opinion of modern social media, I have found myself unable to resist several of the platforms in the recent past. I would constantly check my phone, scroll for hours on end, and mindlessly switch between apps. When I tried to get some work done on my laptop, I would often find myself compulsively opening a new tab and going to Facebook or Reddit. I was hooked, and these habits had a profoundly negative impact on my life. I noticed a drastic decrease in my patience and ability to concentrate over time. I felt less present in my life, less motivated, and more anxious compared to a few years ago. Ultimately, I decided to make some changes. These began with a purposeful effort to reduce my time spent on social media and eventually culminated in the deletion of my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter / X accounts. The decision to delete my accounts was primarily spurred on by the politicization of the platforms, though, so I will not go into that here.

I have had essentially unrestricted access to the internet since I started using it, so I've witnessed the evolution of social media over the years. In the beginning, after a very brief stint on MySpace, I created a Facebook account. I probably shouldn't have been allowed to do this given how young I was, and if I recall correctly, my parents did not approve. That didn't matter to me, though. I was immediately hooked. I spent an enormous amount of time online during my teens, most of which felt rewarding at the time. I bounced between basically every major platform there was. I was chatting with friends, "learning things," playing social games, and meeting people from other parts of the world. Eventually, I began exploring parts of the web that were less mainstream, including Reddit and 4Chan. I didn't use 4chan much, as I could tell early on how unhinged much of the userbase was, but Reddit became a mainstay in my life. Thankfully, the worst thing to happen to me during this time was my occasional exposure to graphic videos of people being killed. Could've been worse, I guess.

Toward the end of high school, I was using social media less, but it always felt like an inescapable realm. It felt as though half of life was lived in reality, and half was lived online. I wasn't consciously thinking about the impact my social media use was having on me, but it undoubtedly influenced my mental health and development.

During my college years, I drifted away from social media in general and, for a time, felt that it had outlived its usefulness. For years after that, I barely used the stuff, only returning in earnest a few years ago when I began to look for freelance photography work and needed to market myself. I had difficulty finding fulfilling work, photography or otherwise, which combined with a horrifying political climate and general dissatisfaction with life to produce a relentless need for escapism. Gradually, my real hobbies fell away, as did many of my relationships. I had no energy for them. Thus, I turned to the easiest, cheapest, and most infectious solution: endlessly scrolling social media on my phone.

The cheap thrills of social media contributed to a year-long depressive cycle. The entertainment was often good enough to keep me from seeking out something more fulfilling. I was spending a lot of time on my phone, mostly looking at Reddit and Instagram Reels. I eventually reached a point where I was barely even registering the things I was looking at, instead mindlessly scrolling through whatever the algorithms decided to put in front of me. Whenever I had downtime, I would pull out my phone, open one of the apps, scroll for a while, then switch to another. Then, another. Over and over again. I wasn't enjoying myself or getting anything meaningful out of it, but I couldn't stop. I felt like I was living in a haze; weeks and days were just disappearing. It was an addiction.

Once I realized what was actually happening, I felt like a failure, but it still took some time for me to improve my habits. I had wasted an unbelievable amount of time on something that, at best, made me laugh a handful of times. It legitimately felt as if my brain had atrophied over the course of about a year and a half. Focusing on anything had become extremely difficult, and I was noticeably less patient.

Then, a revelation: though this is the worst it's ever been, I have always struggled with these things. My relationship with social media was never particularly healthy, even though I hadn't noticed negative consequences before. I was functioning just fine for the longest time. Life became too difficult to deal with, so I sought comfort in the addictive apps on my phone.

I took a step back and thought about my situation. Something needed to change, but what could I do?

Making My Phone Inconvenient

Though it seems at odds with the entire point of smartphones, my initial approach involved making my phone less convenient to use. A lot of the addictiveness of modern technology stems from ease of use and convenience. A related topic to look into, should you be interested, is the invention of infinite scrolling.

The first thing I tried was to simply place my phone far away when I was trying to get something done. This helped some, but I could immediately tell this was not enough. Despite my phone being elsewhere, I still constantly felt the need to go check it, and could often still hear it buzzing when a notification came through.

Next, I thought about more about how I use my phone. Mostly, I considered what apps I use and what tangible value they provide by being installed on my phone. I had realized that basically everything I was doing on social media was a waste of time, so, I deleted the apps. All of them. And forced myself not to reinstall them. I figured that if there was something I absolutely had to do on one of these platforms, I could just go to the website. It was very difficult at first, but adding that extra level of inconvenience worked shockingly well. I was still spending too much time on my phone, but I could tell I was headed in the right direction.

Lastly, I removed biometric authentication (fingerprint scanning and facial recognition) from my phone. This worked surprisingly well, too. Typing in a long passcode every time you want to use your phone is a real pain and, despite only taking a few seconds longer than using biometrics, went a long way.

At this point, I was semi-obsessed with seeing how far I could go. I was beginning to see improvements in my habits and could feel my approach working. I started to hate using my phone, but I was realistic about the fact that I needed to have it around for various reasons.

Depending on your relationship with your phone and how much you trust yourself, you can try other things. At one end of the spectrum is simply setting time limits on certain apps, which can be done on iPhones and Androids. At the other end are timed safes that lock your phone away so you literally cannot use it (well, unless you decide to break the safe open).

Making My Phone Boring

After making my phone as inconvenient to use as possible, I started to think about other ways to keep it out of my hands. I came up with two more tactics: making my phone unappealing to look at and adjusting my notifications settings.

Making my phone, a Pixel 8, look more boring was pretty straightforward. I installed a minimalist, text-based Android launcher called Olauncher and removed my background image. This removed a lot of visual distractions and made me feel less compelled to look at my phone all the time. On an iPhone, your options are a bit more limited, but you can still remove apps from your home screen and turn off your background.

The last major tactic I employed was adjusting my notification settings. I disabled all notifications that were not from essential, time-sensitive applications, which pretty much boiled down to phone calls, text messages, emails, and calendar alerts. This allowed me to avoid getting snared by my phone. In other words, disabling most notifications helped me avoid situations where I would pick up my phone to see what notification just came through, but then check something else, then something else...

You can go even further than this, if you'd like. I went down the "dumb phone" rabbit hole, looking at many different models and even seriously considering picking up a Light Phone. I eventually decided that I'm satisfied enough with my current, stripped-down Android phone, but I may go down that path in the future.

I am now at a point where I use my phone more intentionally. I've successfully minimized the excuses I have to pick it up and can feel my patience and ability to focus returning. Seriously, I feel like my capacity for concentration and deep thought is better than it's ever been. I feel more engaged in reality, more aware of the world around me.

However, the war is not won. I still wrestle with that gnawing feeling that I'm out of the loop, though that has been drastically reduced. I'm motivated to keep away from my phone, though, because of the improvements to my behavior and my relationships. Oh, and my contempt for the business models of these companies.

You Are (Still) The Product

The existence of monolithic social media platforms places each of us in an awkward position: we either sign up and check in constantly, or we don't, and risk being out of the loop. At least, that's how they want you to feel. Finding a middle ground between those two options is extremely difficult by design. Social media companies deliberately engineer their platforms to keep users hooked, which has been known for years, but the actual psychological and social impacts of modern social media seem to be under-appreciated by most users. Anecdotally, when the topic comes up, a lot of people I've talked to will make a joke about how high their screen time is on their phone, but that's essentially where the conversation stops.

The sheer size and reach of these social media companies also incentivizes data collection on a massive scale, which has lead to many of the problems of the modern Internet. Platforms build a "shadow profile" on a user based on likes, dislikes, politics, location, and more. The data they use is not limited to what they collect while you're using their services, either. There have been numerous reports over the years on Facebook's tracking across the Internet.

This profile can then be used to manipulate users into engaging on the platform and spending more time there, as well as target them with ads. This engagement might be talking to friends or family, but it can also be arguing with people of different political ideologies, sharing news articles that enrage you, liking pictures of cute animals, or scrolling through reels for a little too long. Every action you take on social media, no matter how insignificant it seems, probably feeds into that platform's understanding of you. If they can figure out what you care about, they can target you with content that makes you want to stay there, and that means more advertising money for them.

I have never liked the business model of these companies. The approach is fundamentally predatory and leads to massive privacy and security risks. Some recent attempts to fix social media, such as the Fediverse, give me cautious hope about the future of the Internet, but there's a long way to go. In the meantime, there are steps we can take to improve our individual situations, but ultimately there will need to be significant changes to the way humanity thinks about and uses the Internet.

Conclusion

I don't have any formal education on a lot of this, nor am I not claiming to be an expert on anything I'm talking about here. I simply wanted to share some observations of mine from recent years. My experience may be somewhat unique (and dramatic), but I think some of you out there will relate to at least parts of it.

While I believe social media platforms have done some profoundly positive things for humanity, I don't think people think about the negatives enough, especially the negative impacts on themselves. It's no secret that social media provides vast channels for the rapid spread of misinformation, AI slop, and hate speech, but I think most people are aware of those issues (whether or not they recognize it when they see it). Here, I am more interested in attempting to convince you, dear reader, to think more deliberately about the way you use technology. Don't let it steal your time. It's gratifying to be able to focus deeply on a task or hobby, engage more actively with your friends, and, every once in a while, just exist without doing anything at all.