Is Social Media Finally "Out"?

Reflecting On My Month of Presence

Photo by Adem AY on Unsplash

Hi, friends. I’m meandering my way into the New Year, fueled by lots of naps after surviving two!!! stomach bugs over the last week.

You might remember I had self-appointed December my ‘month of presence.’ Now, one month in to my 3 month shopping ban, and a month into a social media semi-ban, I’ve been using all my newfound free time to… who are we kidding, I still don’t have free time.

But I have spent a truly absurd amount of time over the last few weeks reflecting on the memories I’ve had with my phone. At the risk of getting uncomfortably nostalgic on the Internet, just hang with me for a few quick trips down memory lane…

2014

I’m running a college book fair, raising money for something-or-other I’ve long since forgotten. I pull up my e-mail to find a response from a potential graduate school advisor, regrettably informing me that she isn’t accepting new students this year.

The e-mail wasn’t the only one I got that application season, but it was the most devastating. I began experiencing panic attacks when opening my e-mails, positive that there would be rejections on the other side of the screen.

For some deeply unclear reason, I then put that anxiety-provoking tech feature in my back pocket, ready to be checked approximately 5,284 times a day. The anxiety is still there a decade later— dormant, perhaps. Resting. Better managed, now. But never completely gone.

2016

Ding, ding, dingity-ding. Days of radio silence were sporadically broken up by a rapid-fire assault of texts from my ex, messages that threatened my safety and dignity. The words came hurling at me, from a number I couldn’t block until the paperwork was finished. If I ignored them, they got worse; if I responded, they got worse still.

Around the same time, I reconnect with an old friend of my ex’s. He had an inkling of what was happening (those pesky Facebook relationship statuses have a tendency to do that) and how was I doing? Our playful banter, separated by two thousand miles but connected by a phone screen, feels like a soothing hug. Someone who knew me in the ‘before’— before I was a 22-year old divorcee, before I had moved halfway across the country, who got what I was going through while being blissfully distant from my day-to-day reality.

For months, the brief moment before I opened a new message was like playing roulette with my feelings, never knowing who— and, by extension, what— would be on the other side of the screen.

2017

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m at the movies with a friend. We’re watching some black and white classic (her pick, not mine) and my phone is blowing up. I’d been trying out Tinder with lackluster results. The despondent law student who barely mustered a smile all dinner, but inexplicably wanted to see me again. The contractor who tried just a little too hard.

The messages, though, were mostly from the same person: My now-husband was sitting just a few miles away, at a hockey game with his best bud. We’d been talking for several weeks but hadn’t yet planned to meet up. But he had one goofy mission: Get this stranger to say Happy Valentine’s Day back. So over and over, he wove it into the day’s conversation: “Happy Valentine’s Day!” “How’s your Valentine’s Day going?” “Just watching hockey for Valentine’s!”

I was bewildered, but his charm offensive must have worked because we’ve since welcomed 2 kiddos and celebrated nearly 5 years of marriage.

2020

My oldest was born in the throes of COVID-lockdown, just weeks after my own mother’s suicide. I might have tended towards ‘anxious’ anyway, but, uhhh, let’s just say my brain wasn’t exactly on its best behavior.

The baby won’t sleep unless she is held, so I sit upright in my bed, my elbow cradling her skull. I’m terrified that I’ll fall asleep holding her, that she’ll nuzzle her head too far into my chest, that I’ll wake up and she won’t be breathing. Adrenaline keeps me up, feeling the weight of her tiny body and the enormity of my new responsibility, for hours. When adrenaline starts to fail, I reach for my phone. The blue light keeps me company, and keeps me awake, while she sleeps.

We keep this up for the better part of a year. During that time, I read 32 books, began using Instagram, and spent innumerable hours doom-scrolling the news.

Our phones are woven into the tapestry of everyday life.

These snippets are nothing special, other than being unique to me, but I’m sure you have similar moments: Exchanges with your own partner or exes; funny or impactful messages shared with loved ones and friends; announcements of promotions, big moves, or family additions.

But when I think about some of the moments that really mattered— the cute, the funny, the downright awful— in the ‘digital’ world, what gave them meaning was the presence of real feelings and connections to other humans. Not to bots or influencers or headlines.

And, of course, there’s the practical: The grocery-ordering and weather monitoring and e-mail checking. But the overwhelming majority of the time, the instinct to reach for my phone is not for purely utilitarian purposes. It’s to feel something— sometimes, anything.

I’m not concerned that we hold some of the most powerful technological devices known to mankind in our back pocket and we use them to check out funny cat videos (occasionally). I am concerned that we are using these devices to compare ourselves to others, to connect to outrage from every corner of the globe over our morning coffee, and to escape uncomfortable emotions in our real life.

I’ve been feeling the winds shifting. For me, personally, but perhaps for people, in general: In 2024, social media is out.

But how did we get here?

The 2024 Internet is Feeling Kinda… Boring

Who else remembers the OG days of Myspace and Facebook? Setting up your first profile (this involved hours obsessing over background colors and music on Myspace…pretty please tell me I wasn’t the only 14 year old girl to hope that this would say something profound about who I AM in the world), posting cryptic updates for high school crushes, and song lyrics for every roller-coaster emotion.

Of COURSE, places like MySpace quickly became creepy (as has just about every social media platform since). But in the early days of social media, the Internet felt like an extension of real, in-person interactions— perhaps because status updates were really just conversation starters, and the bulk of our time was spent in ‘messages,’ having conversations with such quick responses it was almost as rewarding as talking in person.

Back then, the Internet was FUN.

It’s a joke as old as social media that nobody cares what you had for breakfast. But honestly, as these platforms began to migrate from places where over-shared your dinner plans and connected with people you knew IRL to places where you connected with influencers, well, we constructed a weird performative alt-reality.

NOT what I had for breakfast. But maybe somebody did? Or they spent 40 minutes taking this picture and then the food got cold and sucked IRL. We’ll never know.

And I could go on a rant about tech bros in Silicon Valley and surveillance capitalism and influencer culture. And I could lay blame on the developers who intentionally created addictive features like continuous scroll, or the algorithms that funnel people towards ‘extreme’ content.

But many of the people more tangentially involved in the system are also victims of the same system. The same small business that gains visibility on Instagram can lose customers when the algorithm changes. And while some influencers are enormously profitable, more than half of influencers make less than $10,000 a year. As

lyz

Lenz astutely observed, “mom influencers [in particular] are essentially profiting off the unpaid labor of motherhood.” In other words, mothers in a broken social system are trying to use a broken social media system as a remedy— but fueling more discontent in the process.

Weird Internet Funnels Going to Weird Places

My dad— the coolest Baby Boomer with a TikTok account— recently noted that TikTok used to be just cool dance videos, and now it’s mostly politics (with the caveat, of course, that he might have just found his want onto Politics-Tok, the same way TikTok feeds teen girls content that promotes eating disorders and self-harm). I think there is a real and meaningful place for discourse online, but these conversations are increasingly (or maybe always, and I’ve just felt more aware of it the past 4-5 years? Do weigh in!) less thoughtful and nuanced, and more performative outrage and endless trolls.

I don’t mean to dismiss the Internet altogether: Some of the most evocative writing I’ve read has been through a screen, where strangers with beautiful writing make me laugh or bring me to tears. And, of course, these screens connect us to like-minded people all over the globe.

In the heyday of personal blogging, authors such as Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist and Cait Flanders of Blonde on a Budget (who now runs a fantastic Substack,

The Mindful Consumer

) profoundly shaped my world view— making it such a surreal moment to have connected with and guest posted for both writers this past year). I don’t take these kinds of shifts lightly.

But the Internet of today just doesn’t feel the same. Trying to find an online ‘tribe’ requires wading through a cesspool of sponsored content, and even the things that aren’t obviously sponsored feel, well, a little lackluster. Russell Nohelty recently observed that this was because SEO— or search engine optimization— “often surfaces middle-of-the-road but easily shareable articles to the top.” And let me tell you— his article was about something else entirely, but this little nugget of information OPENED THE HEAVENS and I suddenly understood why Google never gives me anything interesting anymore. There are still a few beautiful corners of the Internet, but none of them are SEO optimized for easy access… so instead, 99% of us are stuck wading through trolls searching for substance.

I’m not pretending my social media ban was all sprinkles and unicorns because, well, humans are complicated.

Predictably, my screen time dropped during my month of presence. Mission accomplished. ✔

But what did go up? Listening to music (fine by me), actually watching television (I made it through the entire holiday season without a Christmas rom-com, but I did re-watch the second season of Bridgerton… swoon… and start Ghosts), working out, and… eek, anxiety.

Turns out, being able to reach for a digital pacifier was helping to regulate my nervous system, especially at night. No big surprise, since I spend all day corralling two pint-sized tornadoes, with all their big feelings and endless snack requests and full-bodied tantrums. Of course, it’s a positive to have to actually sit with and feel this hard stuff, but it took a few weeks for my brain to get the memo.

I also realized just how much I count on the online world to make me feel productive. Of course, I am ‘productive’ in the real world, but many of the tasks involved in keeping little humans alive are routine: cook, only to cook again in 4 hours; clean the countertops, just to clean them again tonight; change diapers, just to change them again; play blocks, only to knock them over and build the same tower again.

Online, I do actually productive things— like write to you— too. But in my month of presence, I realized I was also still using debatable metrics of productivity like “thoroughly researches completely useless things” and “keeps up with the news in real time” to feel like I was accomplishing something in my day.

The Future of the Social Media Ban

I told myself that I would re-evaluate the social media ban every week. At the end of Week One, I logged into my accounts. Within 5 minutes, as I texted a friend, I “NOPED the heck back out of there.” Social media felt too much like the Wild Wild West: Too many noisy things demanding my attention with the general feeling that a rogue cowboy will be pulling a weapon (an oddly specific advertisement? a hateful comment? an influencer ‘connecting’ to sell me something? ) at any moment. 

I didn’t show my face on social media again until Week Three. I was feeling pretty down in the dumps about spending Christmas Day sick, so I spent a few minutes on Instagram… and whadda ya know, I didn’t feel any better. BIG SURPRISE THERE. I did use Facebook a few times to post things to my local Buy Nothing group over the last week, but I didn’t do any aimless wandering on the platform— and even that felt a little bit icky.

I want to be able to make a big, dramatic declaration that I’m BREAKING UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER.

But I’m not, yet. In particular, I happen to be an admin of my local Buy Nothing group, so I might have to figure that teeny tiny 3,000+ member situation out before going nuclear. As we facilitate a leadership transition over the next few months, I’ll still be popping in to social media once a week or so to handle admin tasks.

My month away did reinforce something important though: I didn’t miss social media. Like, at all. And equally important, the only people who might even have conceivably noticed or cared that I wasn’t engaged in anything with a perpetual-scroll feature were the people in my real life who benefitted from my 'presence.’

Next week, I’ll be back on my usual consumerism + all things green beat! But it’s been a fun break to chat about social media and presence as we ring in the New Year. Did you find yourself more or less engaged with the online world over the holidays? The comments are open and I’d love to hear from you!

Etc.

I would also LOVE some book recommendations! Over the past few weeks, I devoured Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now and Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle: Why Individual Climate Action Matters More Than Ever.

Next up on my list is re-reading Minding the Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Solve Our Environmental Crisis and Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture (Bookshop affiliate links). What would you add??