Why I Don't Use Social Media

Published October 12

Intro

About a year ago, I was spending 4–5 hours per day on social media, switching from one app to another every half hour or so until I inevitably got bored with the one I was on. I, like most people my age, recognized my screen time was a problem but never did much about it. At about that time, I learned about the Digital Minimalism, a community built on intentional and bare-bones digital lives. Slowly, I made steady changes to my software, eventually leading up to deleting my Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, and Twitter accounts, blocking my laptop IP from loading Reddit and Twitter, and deleting my YouTube watch history to prevent video recommendations.

Because of my slow transition to a Digital Minimalist lifestyle, I have a pretty unique perspective on this issue. On the one hand, I am a 21-year-old who is intimately familiar with the apps, differentiating me from the Gen-Xers and Boomers that criticize the mediums without understanding them. On the other, I am also the only person I know my age who doesn't have an Instagram account.

As a philosophy student, I also feel like I have a more unique approach to diagnosing the issue. I, like most other Digital Minimalists, initially started to explore the ideas through self-help videos and articles, which, if I'm being honest, just created a guilt for 'not using my time productively.' I have only found a few small spaces which don't advocate for either hustle culture or optimism regarding the value of the apps. In this small and unique space, I think there is a unique and valuable middle ground; a place to create more legitimate free time to relax, enjoy company, and connect more and deeper with loved ones.

In this essay I first explore how people around my age – early 20s – overestimate the value of social media in their lives. Second, I argue the inverse, asserting that the same demographic underestimates the harms of social media. Third, I address blame for the issue, arguing that high screen times are not a personal failure, like many self-help gurus make it out to be. Finally, I give some resources and tips that have helped me to reduce my dependency on social media apps.

In this piece, I don't pretend to be perfect with my digital life – Personally, I am much more prone to internet addiction than most. This essay is not an attempt to condemn individuals with irresponsible digital lifestyles. Rather, my only goal is to provide a framework for shaking deeply settled digital habits.

Before beginning, I also want to acknowledge that the harms of the platforms are much more myriad than I have space to explore here. As they stand, Social media platforms threaten democracy, mental health, privacy, and journalism. Though these are obviously worth talking about, I wanted this piece to be be more individually focused; a more direct and intuitive argument for the reader to review their own digital media ecosystem.

Overstatement of Value

There is a cultural amnesia regarding life before the apps became so unanimous. 10–15 years ago, people were still connected with their loved ones and maintained perfectly healthy relationships. I absolutely won't deny that social media made social interactions better in some ways -- I still feel the loss of being out of the loop on local concerts and the ritual of adding an acquaintance to symbolically cement them as a friend. But in general though, I find the advertised benefits are found similarly well in more primitive mediums such as texts, calls, or emails. The important question is then: Do social media's unique features justify the amount of time spent on them?

I want to propose two tests I think are useful for grounding the benefit an app brings to someone's life.

1. How much would you pay per month to continue using the app?

Even at the peak of my usage, if Instagram switched their revenue model to a monthly subscription, I know I would've rather deleted my account than pay even 25 cents per month. At that same point, I was spending maybe two hours a day on the app. The amount I was willing to pay (essentially nothing) was so far from how much I used the app.

Obviously, free things are still worthwhile. But if how much I would give up to continue using it and my usage time are so distant, that product is likely not worthwhile. For me, this distance was so huge that I really couldn't justify using it, even if it was for free. For apps I consider closer to my identity, such as Neocities, Spotify, or Strava, I am much more comfortable paying, which I take as a sign they add good value to my life. In other words, I don't have them downloaded just to have them.

2. From the last time you used this particular app, what is one thing you remember valuing seeing or reading?

This immediately convinced me to limit my social media usage. After hearing this advice from a (sadly, forgotten) source, I decided that next time I fall into an Instagram Explore or YouTube Shorts rabbit hole, that I would try to remember just one thing an hour later. When I did inevitably fall into a rabbit hole, an hour later, I entirely forgot everything I saw or read while scrolling for the past two hours. After repeating this test a few more times, I realized that I earned no lasting enjoyment or satisfaction from that screentime. Spending two hours on something and not remembering anything about it, is pretty unacceptable to me. Not feeling any satisfaction for something that took that long was an immediate sign that doom-scrolling provided me next to nothing.

Seeing social media as a hobby has also been pretty influential with how I interact with it. Anything in my life that I spend 2 hours a day doing would obviously be considered either a hobby or chore. Why would Instagram not be either? When I tried to fit Instagram into the hobby bucket, I realized how little I got from it compared with my other hobbies, which would push me to delete the account. If I thought of it as a chore, I would realize that I could live an equally happy life without maintaining it – so why bother? Both cases, I felt, were reason enough to pull the plug.

Understatement of Harms

Social media gets dragged for many reasons, but one often overlooked harm is the ironic way which the medium robs genuine social connection. In his Digital Minimalism Cal Newport, argues that likes, for example, are mere simulacra of engagement with loved ones. In some sense, he argues, liking an image featuring a friend's anniversary relieves people of a reason to call and congratulate them. A like and a phone-call both communicate the same literal sentiment, but the latter brings people substantially closer to their friends. There are two assumptions in his claim: First that a like is inferior to a slower and more complete expression of emotion, and second, an empirical claim that slower communication is being replaced rather than added to. I think both are at least close to true.

For a Slower Communication

Though a like and a phone call may both communicate joy in another's happiness, the latter is substantially richer. A phone call enables back and forth, allows the unique expression of feelings, and shows a deeper commitment to the relationship. A large part of a genuine connection is the time and energy it takes to express honestly and authenticity with another person, meaning that a lot of the social richness is lost. Intentional time and effort with another person is precisely the art of friendship, something that is impossible to attain with a double tap. Additionally, the depth of communication is reduced by the now universal heart symbol. The meaning of which is equally applied to memes, tragedies, or a sibling's graduation. In sum, it seems rather uncontroversial that the first assumption of inferiority is true.

Against Replacement

By and large, deeper forms of communication are being replaced by the shallower ones. In other words, as social media has grown more popular, phone calls, emails, and letter writing have culturally dwindled. Personally, when I decided to get rid of social media, I found myself pretty detached from my friends. Even though I think the quality of our relationship stayed the same, I felt constantly out of the loop. This was a wake-up call that my engagement with them outside of social media was much lesser than I assumed. It meant my passive consumption of their content was the main way I though I was maintaining the relationships I had. I didn't even realize that I lacked the socially rich foundation of phone calls, texts home, and letters without social media.

Anecdotally, most people my age would find themselves in a similar place. Normally, when I mention to someone that I cold-call friends, they are taken aback. I also receive far fewer phone calls as time goes on. I don't have any reason to take myself as special in regards to the in the replacement of high quality communication with shallower communication.

Blame

People often feel like they struggle with overuse, but want to will themselves into using social media better. I think that this mindset is mostly mistaken.

When discussing the issue, the first question is why the issue came to be. If everyone feels addicted to their phones, its clearly not an individual problem; its a systemic one. Trillions of dollars are collectively spent with the explicit purpose to increase screen time. As an ex-Facebook employee testified before the House Antitrust Comittee, "Your only job is to get an extra minute. It’s immoral. They don’t ask where it’s coming from. They can monetize a minute of activity at a certain rate. So the only metric is getting another minute.” This is not a neutral technology that is being misused; addiction is built into the business model. Insofar as the incentives are structured to maximize time on app, every use will always be a battle between an individual and a billion dollar company with the top psychologists in the world. Your interests and Meta's are almost entirely opposed and its a fight that's lost as soon as the app is installed.

Understanding this shifts blame from the individuals who 'just don't have the willpower to use it less' to those that are intentionally bypassing willpower through code. Most of the self-helpy types I find attempt to pin addiction and overuse on weakness of character, but addiction is instead an intentional act of algorithmic aggression.

Reframing from failure to harm results in two conclusions. The first and most important is that nobody should feel bad about being on their phone a lot. It is no surprise that an individual lost a fight with one of the richest companies in the world. The second emphasizes that the harm is not just wasting time, but rather, someone else profiting from rewiring the brain. There are algorithms explicitly designed to bypass your rational thinking and keep the lizard brain satiated -- a so-called "race to the bottom of the brain stem." You are not in control. Nobody is. It then becomes substantially harder to just 'use social media better,' leaving the only escape to be deleting the app.

Resources

I have been on my "phone bad" arc for a while now. The following are the most important resources I have come across that have helped curb my addiction, and hopefully will help you. I really prefer technological solutions to sheer willpower, since they change the environment to remove temptations. Think of it as being a recovering alcoholic sat in a bar vs. a cafe. Here are some ways to make your digital environment a cafe.

Tips and Tricks that people have found effective

In general, I will offer resources in order of least to most extreme changes.

Phone

Desktop

Literature

I don't want to make a official bibliography for this, but here are some of the more influential things I have read and watched that make me feel so strongly about this idea.