Social Exit

Looking back, I’m grateful now for some snotty messages I read on social media. They stung at the time. There was even a sense of betrayal looped in because the person behind it all was a friend.

The incident spurred me to take a break. I’m certainly not the first person to swear off social media for a mental holiday. It seems we often stumble across people making this announcement—and usually ON social media, which is either ironic or indicative of just how dumb the whole thing is.

I didn’t make some grandiose announcement. I just put it away.

At the same time, I began researching the (sometimes) disastrous effects our addictions to social media, smartphones, and technology in general are having on our abilities to concentrate and remain focused. In a nutshell: It’s scary.

It’s not just that we’re sold the notion that we need to “stay connected.” It’s gone way beyond that, to the point where social media networks are flat-out engineering their systems to manipulate you—and you don’t even know it. We are pawns. We’re being used and abused and certainly set against each other in order to make stupendous profits for a few very smart people who learned quickly how to drive us like cattle.

But . . . I have to

I’m in a difficult position because the radio station I work for has a substantial following on social media, and it’s how we’re asked to sometimes communicate with thousands of listeners who expect it. So I will occasionally log on to the station’s pages—not my personal profile—and do a quick post for entertainment value. Then I leave, without scrolling or looking at one thing. Even then, I feel dirty.

Look, I’m not foolish enough to believe that saying something like, ‘You need to put your phone down and back away’ could have any effect on the vast majority of people. The very problem with addiction is that we’re generally unmoved by people telling us to alter our behavior. Christ, we’re addicted. If decades of warnings about cigarettes causing a painful, grisly death aren’t enough to make some people stop committing gradual suicide, what chance would my lone suggestion have of influencing anyone to give their brain a break?

In fact, when I mentioned the idea to a handful of people, 100% of them said they could not do it. Would not do it. Each gave a different reason, and each said, “I’m different.”

That is downright chilling. Like something from a science fiction movie.

All I can do is speak for myself. I’ve always known social media and constant, endless scrolling and surfing were not good for me, and yet I couldn’t stop. Just like I know those freaking chocolate chip cookies are poison and yet I’ll still eat one if given the opportunity. The addiction centers of our brains are way, way more powerful than you think.

What can happen

I’m now six months into my mental holiday, and here’s what I’ve accomplished in that time:

- I’ve finished one novel and I’m 90% finished with another.

- I’ve completed two significant home improvement projects and started another.

- I’ve exercised more.

- I’ve had fulfilling conversations—not text conversations, but actual spoken communication—with old friends I hadn’t spoken with in a while.

- I’m concentrating better.

- I’m eating better.

- Honest to god, I’m sleeping better.

And, perhaps most eye-opening, I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything I’m ‘missing’ on social media. Like . . . nothing. I especially don’t miss the cauldron of both kinds of toxic behavior: bitter hatred and nauseating toxic positivity. I’m so much better off without either.

I’m happier, too, because I’m no longer reading comments. Sure, a few were funny and even helpful; the bulk of them, however, were either asinine or downright mean. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. When posting comments became a thing, it was good news (we saw what people thought) and bad news (we saw what people thought). Now, people feel like they MUST comment, even when the best move would be silence.

Let’s be realistic

Courtesy Diogo Brandao on Unsplash

Is this post going to influence anyone? I’d say no. Few people will read this and analyze how their life and their brain power has been hacked. Nobody wants to even think about it. I’m convinced the poisoning has been so thorough that they can’t think about it.

So, no, I’m not trying t be some sort of evangelist. I’m just speaking what I believe to be the truth. We’ve been bamboozled, and for every benefit we’ve received from gadgets and social media (yes, benefits do exist), there’s at least one harmful side effect.

Live your life. Do whatever you want—even though I’m convinced you’ve been manipulated into what you think you want. I’m sure you believe you’re “different.”

But I can’t emphasize enough how much I’m enjoying the experiment and I can’t see any way I’ll ever devote as much time as I used to in killing off brain cells with garbage overload. It’s like breaking through a fog into sunlight. Looking back, I see the opaque, gray swirl that held my mind hostage while someone in Silicon Valley giggled and bought another mansion.

Screw them.