navigating life without social media
can we even log off?
Every technological advancement brings along it's inevitable criticisms. First it was the kids with their damn newspapers, and then the damn radio, the damn tv rotting our brains, and now it’s our damn phones ruining our attention spans.
But here’s the thing - I really don’t think social media is inherently the problem. I believe it’s simply a tool in which our society uses to enhance our daily lives, and in turn, highlighting the state of society as a whole.
This can be anything from people sharing their interests, creative ideas, and knowledge with the world, to hate speech, misinformation, and political arguments, and everything in between. (Hey Siri, play “Welcome to the Internet” by Bo Burnham).
But social media is still a tool. People use it to connect with friends and loved ones, get inspiration for projects, how-to videos, etc. There are so many use cases and yet, when politics and products start infiltrating the platforms, it starts to feel all-consuming. It’s like a highway in which it’s purpose is to get you from one place to another, that becomes littered with billboards.
Suddenly, everyone is selling you something, trends are moving at a mile a minute, and you just cant. keep. up. There’s always a problem, and someone has a solution to sell you, or a solution they “promise” if you elect them into office.
So you try to find some quiet in all of the noise, and log off. You vow to limit your screen time every day. The problem is, it feels a lot like vowing to give up your cell phone and just using pay phones - pay phones are few and far between, if they aren’t entirely extinct.
By that, I mean that social media is so entwined in our daily life, we use it to go offline. How do you find what local events to attend? How do you sell your secondhand items? How do you promote your business? You can’t use the newspaper anymore, who is subscribing to it? (It’s also behind a paywall, but that’s a separate conversation).
We go to Twitter (X) to keep up with the news, we use Facebook to find events, groups, or sell our old things, we use Instagram to connect with organizations and crowd source funding for natural disasters. This is where people are congregating. This is where people are.
Society has all but abandoned our analog way of life.
Until other mediums emerge to compete with the current monopolies at play, it’s hard to log off, but we can try.
I agree that social media is a tool. However, I do think there’s a degree of manufactured reliance and the encouragement of addiction by the social media platforms themselves. It’s hard to ignore the fact that they intentionally fill our feeds with rage bait, anger, and hate just to keep us engaged. Aside from being intentional with how you use social media (or leaving it completely), I’m not sure how to combat this.