Why You Might Want To Quit Social Media For Good

A couple of days ago I finished a series set in the late 90s, early 2000s. The main characters were both my age, and their lives were relatively similar to mine.

The series did a good job of illustrating the ups and downs of a life that felt like it could be anyone. A job most televisions do terribly.

I couldn’t help but feel as if their lives felt more real than mine and those around me. At first, I couldn’t pin down where the feeling came from.

But, then suddenly it came to me — they had no social media. They weren’t constantly attacked from all angles with things vying for their attention.

Their life was their life. Their attention was directed at what mattered to them and their lives.

As I watched the show I started to grow nostalgic for a time without smartphones. As if I yearned back to a time I had not lived through.

I get this feeling sometimes. Especially when I ponder the lives of our ancestors. But, there I have an easy time, logically, concluding that it is way better now.

When it comes to smartphones, I’m not sure I can. At least when it comes to what dominates time spent on smartphones — social media.

At twelve or thirteen I got my first iPhone. That year also happened to be the year Instagram grew popular. Soon after Snapchat followed.

The early 2010s was the start of something that would change how we interact with others and the world around us. And, I am literally the first generation that ventured into adulthood in the presence of social media.

At around the age of seventeen, I had started to come across some information on, what looked to be, a sinister background to social media.

The entire business model was based on selling user data to advertisers. The users are the products the social media giants are selling. You are the product.

The most valuable thing is your attention. The business model’s entire objective is to keep people on the platforms for as long as possible.

To achieve this they hired the best behavioural psychologists, the people who design casinos, and addiction experts. They put some of the greatest minds we have to come up with the most addictive product they could.

The target audience? Everyone — but, sadly, mainly kids like me.

After films like The Social Dilemma, and books like The Coddling of The American Mind, we now know that social media is responsible for a lot of suffering. Especially among the young.

The higher-ups at these massive companies do not let their kids use their own products. There is a lesson there.

Despite this, a lot of people are still ignorant of the negative effects of social media. Most of us that are aware still use them. Why? Because it is one of the easiest addictions to justify.

It is normal to be addicted to social media. It is the norm and we are norm-conforming creatures. If there is no external pressure except our judgement we are likely not strong enough to quit.

If you are reading this and think — “This is not for me, I have no issues with social media” — you are coping. It’s your ego justifying an addiction.

I am going to explain to you what social media is robbing you of and how that might be slowly destroying your life in a way you are blind to see.

After this explanation, I am going to give you two options. Depending on what type of person you are, you will have to pick the one you think works for you.

I want you to be in control of social media, not the other way around. It is more than likely hindering you from becoming what you could be.

That’s all I want. I want you to become what you could be. To reach whatever potential you possess.

Intermittent Boredom: A Necessary Evil or Something To Embrace?

“Daydreaming is becoming a part of the past and that is scaring me.” -MJ

If you ask your parents or if you lived in the time before social media you would know what intermittent boredom is. It happened every single day, multiple times a day.

Waiting for the bus, the doctor, sitting on the toilet, basically any time you go to grab your phone was before a time when boredom was allowed to arise.

During these bouts of boredom, something called the default mode network (DMN) is activated. It’s a network of brain regions that are active when the mind is at rest and not actively paying attention to something.

When there is a lack of external stimulation keeping your attention occupied boredom comes to say hello. This causes your mind to wander and engage in spontaneous, internally directed thoughts.

“So what?” You may ask.

Well, our smartphones are robbing us of boredom (at least productive boredom).

“But, boredom is bad, right? That’s why we avoid it.”

This is an assumption I’m not willing to make.

The regular activation of the DMN through bouts of intermittent boredom seems vital in creating and maintaining functional individuals. And it makes sense…

I view letting our thoughts wander much like the REM sleep for daytime. It is when we get to reflect on our current position in our world. We process emotions, recalibrate where we are and where we should be going, and reflect on both the past and future.

If we somehow stole someone’s REM sleep, they would be in big trouble. Why don’t we apply this to the waking state: What happens when the DMN is not activated enough?

1) Self-awareness & introspection

The DMN is involved in what we call self-referential processing. This allows us to reflect on our own thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Healthy activation of the DMN will contribute to better self-awareness, which is essential to understanding our emotions.

2) Social cohesion & empathy

As you can imagine, understanding our own thoughts helps us understand others too. The regular activation of the DMN helps us understand the thoughts, feelings and intentions of others better.

The activation of the DMN has been associated with tasks involving empathy and perspective-taking. Disruptions in DMN functioning may impair social interaction and empathy.

3) Logical thinking & learning

The DMN helps with the integration of new information into existing knowledge networks. It is important in both learning new things but also to adaptive behaviours.

Dysfunction in the DMN may affect memory processing, leading to difficulties in learning, retaining information, and adapting to new experiences.

4) Emotional Regulation

The DMN seems to allow us to interact with what usually isn’t available to our conscious awareness. It brings forth emotions, thoughts and perspectives that were previously hidden from us.

The better we become at tapping into our emotions, thoughts and perspectives the less reactive we become. On the flip side, if we never tap into our emotions the balance between cognitive control and emotional processing will be disrupted.

When life’s inevitable setbacks hit us we will have a harder time dealing with them. This leads to an increased risk of developing mood disorders such as depression and anxiety.

5) Maladaptive Rumination

The DMN cannot always be ignored or suppressed by social media. If an event is triggering enough we will have to process it.

If we are not used to the activation of the DMN such an event could very well lead to the excessive activation of it. Excessive activation leads to rumination, which involves repetitive and negative self-focused thoughts.

If we never allow ourselves to process the small things in life, what makes us think we will be able to positively process the large things?

I could go on and on. But, there you have it. No wonder we’ve seen a massive rise in psychological disorders in the past 10 years.

We are creating emotionally infantile, egocentric, narcissistic individuals lacking the skill of logical thinking. Not only that, we are tilting ourselves toward neuroticism. Is that something we want?

This is not even taking into account the direct effects social media has on our attention span, self-esteem and anxiety.

It is only the indirect effects of stealing something that was a part of all of our ancestors’ day-to-day.

Daily bouts of intermittent boredom.

So, what do we do? Well, to me it seems as if we have two options.

The Two Options: Quit or Restrict

The first option is to quit. You could quit them all, no movies, no series, no music, no podcasts, no YouTube, no social media, no nothing. I don’t think this is necessary.

However, I want you all to start here. I want you to take on a challenge that might actually change your life in a week. A solid week where you quit some or all forms of digital entertainment.

Depending on your current addictions I want you to quit the thing you go for in times of intermittent boredom. The entire goal of this challenge is to allow the DMN to activate and do all the things it does.

I have basically quit social media, my drug is YouTube and podcasts. So, that’s where I aim my focus.

What is yours?

After a week you should notice how fucked up it is that we are constantly stimulating ourselves for no other reasons than the stimulation itself. We might justify it in other words but that is what it is.

We are avoiding to confront our internal thoughts because they sometimes are unpleasant — but, that unpleasantness is necessary to create a stable person.

Now it is time to figure out how you want digital entertainment to be a part of your life.

The second option you have is to define the constraints on your use of digital entertainment. This is an option for those with discipline, those who actually do what they say they will do.

I am calling it digital entertainment because I want to broaden the category outside of the scope of social media. It is anything that you use to distract yourself when boredom arises.

You can set up the constraints however you want. The purpose is to use digital entertainment on your terms, not for them to sip into every nook and cranny of your free time.

I think it’s good to view it through before and after time, limits of use, and conditions of use.

Before & After Time: Define a time before which you don’t use any digital entertainment. Perhaps you set the time at 17:00.

Limits of use: Determine a set amount of time, videos or any other metric you want that you can use a certain digital entertainment.

This could be 20 minutes of YouTube, or maybe it’s 10 minutes of scrolling at X time. Whatever you decide, don’t go over your limit.

Conditions of use: Set conditions that need to be fulfilled for you to be allowed to use X digital entertainment.

Perhaps this is only watching series/movies with other people. Or it could be only allowing yourself to watch YouTube after doing X hours of work.

What I want you to do is to let the DMN activate.

Allowing boredom back into my life has caused a calm that wasn’t there or — rather — removed an underlying stress that I didn’t even notice.

I also remember what happens in my life more clearly. My mind gets the chance to go over the people I’ve recently met, the conversations I’ve had, what I’m supposed to do and how to do it.

I think the DMN acts as an organizer of unorganized thoughts. Whatever those thoughts are about, emotions, people, things to do, or dreams.

If it is not allowed to activate, we slowly become distanced from our real life. We forget simple things, we get overwhelmed by small decisions, and things start to move on autopilot.

We are all inhibiting boredom to some degree, and how much it affects us can only be known by quitting digital entertainment entirely. Let’s do this together and find out how bad it is, if bad at all.

Maybe you’re an anomaly — someone who’s happier the more they digitally distract themselves from their lives. Maybe your DMN didn’t evolve to be as important as for the rest of us.

Whatever justification you use — give it a week. A week where you quit the, for you, most time-consuming digital distractions you use to allow boredom back into your life.

Embrace boredom, and your life will change, hopefully for the better. And, as always, until next Sunday do what makes your future selves proud.