Going Dark

No more Facebook/Instagram

I’ve decided to deactivate my Facebook and Instagram- I know most people won’t care, I don’t really post, and I’m not very engaged, but I’ve given a lot of thought to it and it seems to make sense. The decision seems to carry a strange amount of weight with it, so maybe there are other people who feel similarly. Here’s my rationale:

Most of the quantitative information I got about the effects of social media platforms (specifically ones that are algorithmically-optimized for distraction- Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc) is from a podcast from the Body of Knowledge and their supporting blog entry. It’s geared toward coaches and athletes, but I couldn’t help thinking that there’s no reason it shouldn’t apply to me as well.
Article: https://thebodyofknowledge.com/the-attention-economy-crash-how-social-media-undermines-fitness-health-and-wellness-antisocial-media-part-1/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/going-dark-2/id1220297654?i=1000445143727

As far as the personal, and at the end of the day, more compelling, motivations here’s my thoughts: I immediately think about the everything that I’ll give up- “How am I going to keep up with my extended family? What about the significant personal news that I find out through facebook (weddings, deaths, engagements)? What about the times when it’s really helped me (i.e. connecting me with someone to stay in Denver)? What about being connected to peoples’ reference of current trends that I will give up?

Keeping up with extended family/friends- There are some times that I engage with friends I otherwise wouldn’t have talked to because I saw a post about something that we could connect over. I think that is a potential loss. However, at the end of the day, how much quality was in that connection? I might have felt good to know that someone else was thinking of me and vice-versa, but it’s typically a short conversation which adds little real substance to the relationship. A potential work-around, and I’m still thinking about this, would be to have time (probably on Sundays) of reaching out to people I haven’t talked to in a while to catch up. I think the quality of conversation would be better and it would probably communicate love much more effectively than simply having a surface-level connection over an Instagram post (ohh, you hiked a mountain too!! Cool!)

Significant Personal News- I have been able to congratulate a lot of friends over engagements, new jobs, etc because of learning about it through social media. But every now and then I ask myself this question, “Was there any meaningful action associated with what I saw/read?” Liking a post or adding to the hundreds of “congrats” doesn’t fall into that category. A few times I might have texted someone about it, but if I’m being honest, it might be twice a year. Celebrating is great, but again, the celebration that really meant something to me was typically a surprise birthday party or spending time with actual people. I can’t remember any birthday posts (besides one hilarious one from Jack Hanke- thank you Jack!), but I can remember most of the times I hung out with people.

When it really impacted me? In ten years I’ve been able to help a friend financially once, and I found a place a to stay for a few days once. There’s just not enough examples to make it worth some of the negatives I’ll mention in a second.

Connection to current trends? I just got back from La Vida Base Camp and while I was up there a couple came to visit us, Bruce and Karen. We had almost nothing in common, but they stayed for a couple of weeks and we slowly found things to connect over. They were pretty quiet and content and didn’t draw much attention to themselves. They didn’t know any of the “popular” trends that we were talking about. However, as they left Bruce said to me, “Listen, I’ve been watching how you and your sister act and I want to tell you that your parents must be so proud. Even though they’re in Romania, the fact that you are out here, doing good work and loving other people- you are honoring them with your actions” From that comment and another conversation I had with him, my demeanor for the summer shifted, my actions changed, he actually told me something that mattered.
I know, you can’t always drop heavy-hitting wisdom all the time or else you would get exhausted. There is space for fun, “meaningless” conversation. All I’m saying is- even without access to current trends, they were able to show me love more than many other casual friendships.

Negatives- The body of knowledge podcast lays this out in a very compelling way. I’ll just speak personally. Most of the time when I put away facebook or Instagram I can’t remember what I just looked at. I often check it if I’m feeling lonely or stressed out, but whenever I put it away I either feel the same or worse. I look at cool pictures of mountains and climbers and I FEEL really inspired, but if I spent half that time training maybe I could have accomplished one of those cool things I saw a picture of. My calculating brain thinks- “Time is finite. My goal is to maximizes quality with the time I have. Social media delivers 0 if not negative quality” Without going to much into the algorithms, they are designed to reward impulsiveness which, at least in my life, seems to be at the root of most of my problems. With so much time that I’ve dumped into facebook/insta these past 10 years (10 YEARS!?) I think it’s time to change.

I might be missing something here, but the quatitative, qualitative, and a lot of anecdotal evidence seems to weigh against the distraction driven social media platforms. This isn’t all social media, only those that are built to target your impulsivity. I think it’s all really fascinating and hopefully we’ll find a nice in-between at some point. Maybe, after thinking it over more I’ll come back, who knows? But for now, that’s what I’m thinking. 🙂