My experience walking away from social networks.

Firstly, greetings to all of you reading this!

Secondly, this is more of a personal log based on the entries of my diary. So please don’t expect professionalism from this article.

So, i grew up watching Youtube. Since i was 11 i was fascinated by the tons of content that it offers. Specially the scientific content made by the community, imagine watching how two guys in their garage made a functional engine made with lego.

But… it started to become a problem.

Yeah, because i am now 25 years old and watching this had little to no relevance on my personal or professional life. And since i did it so much in my life it became part of it.

To worsen things up, there was the “Podcast boom” in Brazil. When podcast shows started to get popular in my country. It got to the point where you have a whole topic dedicated to podcasts and tons of content are uploaded to that topic everyday.

I got walloped by this amount of content and curiosities. And i won’t lie, it is interesting. But just because it is interesting it doesn’t mean it is useful.

I don’t remember exactly the details of how i found this video, but i can tell you that it was a turning point in my life:

Jaron Lanier: How the Internet Failed and How to Recreate It

Have you ever felt like you have a lot of scattered pieces of a puzzle, you mount some separated parts and now you need the pieces to join those parts together? This video was the central piece for me.

Basically: social network runs on an addictive business model (just like cassinos). They need to keep you hooked in their platforms so you’ll keep generating data for them to sell. Everything you do generates data: the time you take to like, the speed of your typing, if you read the comments, the comments you like… Everything generates data, and data means money.

It does not mean that social network corps are baddies and want to destroy our society with their high addictive products, they need to make money like anyone else. It does means that you need to keep that in mind and use your social network in a more healthy and organic way.

I decided that i needed to take some steps back from it.

In this article i will detail how am i doing it and i hope to give you insights on how you can do it as well. Hope you enjoy 😃

A quick story about my decision.

When i was in high-school i was addicted to Facebook. I loved to see what other people were doing and i was really hoping that i would find something so interesting in there that would make my day. But often i found the complete opposite. Almost everyday i got out frustrated and angry about something.

Now that i think about it, i was getting angry by problems that weren’t even mine! So one day i unconsciously took one of the best decisions of my life:

I logged out.

The next day, when i was about to log in again, i was greeted by the log-in screen. At that moment everything bad that i witnessed in that social network passed in my head like a shadow of an airplane passing by. I guess by making my access to my addiction source difficult gave me time to think:

“The content that i’m going to see is worth the effort of logging in?”

As you can tell, i was very lazy at that moment. And i guess it saved me. By making me think for a second about why i wanted to log-in, my thoughts kick-started and remembered why i logged out the previous day.

It’s been 5 years since the last time i scrolled my facebook’s feed. Not to say i never logged in again, i logged in twice to watch a League of Legends live from a friend of mine.

Now, fast forward to nowadays (December of 2021). My addiction to facebook turned into an addiction to Instagram and Youtube and now it have some true destructive potential. When you are a teenager and live with your parents you can lose as much time as you want, nothing truly bad is going to happen to you.

But i am an adult now. If i lose time on social networks i wont have time to work. I dreamed so much about leaving my parents house and i did it. I would not throw all my effort in the trash bin because of an addiction.

So, i needed a strategy to get away from it.

The principles:

The objective was not to deprive myself of Youtube or Instagram. But to put it into a leash. I needed a more healthy and organic way of interacting with people and with the content creators i liked.

I based my strategy on those principles:

1 — I will deny my direct access to my addiction source.

This is important. When i was bored my fingers automatically typed “youtube” on the browser. When i was waiting, i entered Instagram app and didn’t even realized it. It was clear that i was using social network to run away from boredom.

Boredom is not a bad thing. It is in boredom that you see tasks that needs to be done, and maybe even, feel like they are interesting. (At least they are better than looking at the ceiling).

By denying my access to social network and being forced to face my boredom, i started creating a new routine. Now i clean my house when i am bored. The direct reward of it is that my house is always in a good condition. The indirect reward is that i feel more energized to work, now that i am in a clean space.

2 — I will avoid hyper-stimulus at the wrong times.

This is related to social network and all kinds of hyper-stimulus.

When you are under stimulus, if it is good, the natural response of our brain is to want more of it.

But now we live in an age that access to hyper-stimulus is constant and easy. It is very easy to fall into some kind of hyper-stimulus trap.

But this is extremely personal. For me, hyper-stimulus involves music. The more agitated it is, the more stimulus i get. To the point where i was working listening to music and i could not concentrate because i was too agitated singing ‘We’re not gonna take it’ from Twisted Sister.

Does it means i will never ever listen to music again? No, it just means i will separate an appropriate moment to do so.

Same thing with social networks. I did not wanted to leave social network for good. I just wanted to take a few steps back. I love watching magic and comedy shows like Penn and Teller and Rowan Atkinson. But it needs to be done at the right time and in a healthy manner.

3 — I will treat my time/patience as a resource.

This one is interesting.

Leaving social media and going to therapy made me realize that i was getting so worried and angry about other peoples problems. And this is funny because:

1 — I was defending people i don’t know in real life. (What if i was defending a bad person?)

2 — I was getting angry at people i don’t know in real life. (What if it was just a misunderstanding?)

3 — I was getting worried about problems that weren’t really problems. (There are people who just take the smallest of things way too seriously)

The consequence of that: I was getting so much of a “us against them” mentality. You disagree with me? Now i will have to stop everything i am doing right now and argue with you for hours.

I came to a point where i felt the need to do it. I scrolled through comments sections looking for someone to fight and looking for arguments that would help me in a fight.

Then, one day i spent 1 hour trying to dismantle a guy’s lie on Instagram. I did it. But the time and energy spent were not worth it.

So i decided that arguing in the internet was too stressful and unproductive. I gave it a break.

Within the first week of walking away from the battlegrounds of the comments section i have found out something interesting:

I don’t need to prove anything.

My time and patience is limited. There are people around me who need it. And every second i spend arguing with random people on the internet is a second less with my family, fiancee, friends, pets or even with myself.

And it is wasted time! It take seconds to come up with a lie and weeks to dismantle it. I may spend all my effort into dismantling a lie. The next minute there will be 10 more.

Not only that but what can i do if someone wants to believe a lie? It’s not my job to convince them it is wrong.

I feel like the internet became a place where if someone is angry at something, you need to be angry too and if you don’t, you are a terrible person. I was not an individual anymore but part of an angry mob.

And there are people who benefit from it. People who grew their accounts/channels raging on something. If those people doesn’t have anything to be angry at, they have no content, and they need to have content everyday. So they will turn a lizard into a dragon if that means more content.

So, i decided that i would give value my time spending it with people i love, studying and pursuing things i always wanted to do.

4 — I will create my own interactions.

All social network have some sort of randomness. The problem is when this randomness overcomes what you want to see.

Youtube recommendations algorithm are just like it. I clicked a clickbait once and i had to spend the whole day telling the algorithm i did not had interest in that kind of content. It was almost like it was saying “Are you sure? But are you really sure? But are you really really sure? But are you really really REALLY TOTALLY sure?”.

And sometimes i was in a totally different topic and the algorithm was recommending videos from unrelated topics. I remember one time i was desperately looking for a math class and the algorithm insisted that i should be watch videos on politics.

Not only that but the channels i really had interest in hardly made it to my recommendations section. Sometimes i would wait weeks for a video from a channel i liked just to find out they posted 4 new videos and i was not notified.

So, i decided i needed a new way of interacting with those platforms, a way that does not involve mining what i liked.

My strategy:

I will keep it short since i wrote too much on the previous section:

1 — Installed a website blocker for my computers.

Again: it does not mean that i will never ever use Youtube or Instagram again. But it forces me to question myself “what am i going to do?”, “Is it worth it?”, “Is there anything else i can do?”

2 — Uninstalled Instagram, disable Youtube and Internet Browser from my phone.

I can always install them back when i need them and the principle is the same of the above.

3 — I have activities to do when bored.

It’s not about fighting boredom, but enjoying it. I changed my view on boredom, i see it as a magical moment when even looking at a rock can be interesting.

I have a lot of books. Every time i’m bored i read them. I had a problem where i couldn’t remember what happened in the previous chapter and it took me away from reading. But i developed a technique to solve it and now i feel so good reading.

I do the house chores. It has never been so clean and my fiancee had never been so happy.

I have some boring tasks at work, but i still do them. It is better than sit at my chair doing nothing.

Maybe tomorrow i will develop a taste for knitting, who knows? Sometimes we try to fight things just to discover that embracing them is far better.

4 — I keep a managed list of interests

I have a Notion list of presentations i like, interesting youtube channels, artists blogs and Tumblrs. I access Youtube from a tool called Freetube. Which is a fully customizable Youtube browser that respects me if i don’t want to receive recommendations or if i just want to receive recommendations from certain channels.

I also have a list for instagram accounts i have interest. I access them through my computer and only them. Im strict with my rule to have a clear objetive when entering social network.

Walk in. Do what you need. Get out.

5 — Connect to people who are near me.

I think that is the main purpose of a social network. If i keep paying attention to distant people i will not have attention to people near me. My friends could have invited me to a party where i did not went because i was listening to what some celebrity said.

So, i decided i would have more interactions with my friends and family and less with strangers.

I guess thats it. I really wanted to write this article and i’m happy i finally did it. Thanks for reading and have a good day!