Jul 19

Jul 19 Sans Social Media

I know what you are thinking. How is it possible that this guy who is using social media to write a blog live without social media? Good question without a good answer. The real answer is that I’m only partially breaking away from social media. Why, you didn’t ask? Well, that is an excellent question.

There is so much news flying around in the world that it is easy, and necessary, to be informed. The problem I found was that there is so much disinformation, vitriol, and fighting on social media that I wasn’t getting news. I was just getting regurgitated, biased opinions.

The result was falling down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. I would tell myself, “self, let’s go on Twitter and see what is going on on the world.” Instead of getting news, I would instead spend two hours scrolling mindlessly through my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feed not really reading what was in front of me but just glancing at the most recent argument about what Trump tweeted in the past three hours. In the end, I didn’t learn about what was going on in the world. I didn’t even get some good entertainment from one of the celebrities I may follow. All I got was two hours older and not a second wiser.

A typical evening in our house after the kids are in bed and the various chores are done is to sit down for an episode or two of television. We have our new shows that we watch when they come out (or, more likely, the day after they come out as we are “cord cutters” so all our first run network shows come from Hulu). We also have a standard set of shows we always go back to when we are all caught up on new shows. The old standards include The Office and Parks & Recreation.

I found myself not even relaxing at night while we were watching our shows. I would sit down and instantly pull my phone to my face. Without even a thought the show would be over and I would have spent the entire time thumbing my way through Twitter. It’s not like I would get new information or enjoy my time looking at my phone. It had become just something to do so as not to think.

I decided I was tired of looking at my phone without a goal in mind but I’m no radical. I know that I can stay connected to many of my friends and family through social media. So I didn’t take the drastic step of deleting Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram from my phone. I went one step shy of that. I simply removed the icons from my home screen. Now my accounts are still sitting there if and when I want to look at them but it isn’t a mindless gesture. I mean, it got to the point that I could get to Facebook on my phone without actually looking at my phone.

Besides, I wanted to be able to do a few things on social media. First, I wanted to be able to write my silly words and post them for all the world to ignore. So this way I can still post this nonsense to Facebook. I also enjoy posting my record of the day on Instagram. So that still gets to go up everyday. Other than that, I have to make an effort to actually look at social media. It seems simple but those few extra swipes actually discourage me from going to my accounts. It becomes a conscious process instead of unconscious.

That doesn’t mean I’m not looking at my phone. I still use my phone everyday but what I’m doing on my phone has dramatically changed. My scrolling has been replaced by:

Actual News - I subscribe to the Washington Post. I take the Sunday edition in actual, physical, paper. That’s right, kids! The newspaper is actually a news paper. A physical relic of a bygone era that is still delivered and dropped on the end of my driveway every Sunday morning.
The weekly subscription to the physical paper comes with a daily subscription to the online account. So instead of getting “news” from Twitter but not really because I’m just scrolling through nonsense, I’m getting news from a legit news source everyday. This allows me to stay informed without having to wade through all the nonsense.
Reading - Amazon has a wonderful Kindle app that you can download to just about any device. So i’m currently reading two books on my Kindle app outside of the hardcopy book that I’m always reading. Right now I’m reading The Intellectual Devotional and A Christmas Carol.
The Intellectual Devotional has a daily entry for a year that covers different topics everyday. Each entry has a few pages about that topic. For example, today’s topic was about the placebo effect and its use in medicine. Tomorrow, I’ll be learning about Form as it relates to classical music.
I also decided to read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. That probably sounds weird for anyone that has read my blog before since I go and see a performance of the play every year. Well, I have never actually read the novella. Sure, I’ve read parts here and there. I’ve also read condensed versions for kids (both Cece and Quentin have a copy). I even have a fancy, bound collection of Dickens’s Christmas tales that includes A Christmas Carol. However, I have never read it from the original text so that is what I’m doing now.

I have to say that I feel more productive than I did when I was getting constantly sucked into the social media cycle. When I sit on the toilet I read some of a book instead of looking at Instagram stories (don’t act like you all don’t look at your phone when you are pooping because I know that you do). At night, when I sit down at the end of the day I actually engage with the shows I”m watching instead of having white noise in the background. I’m really enjoying this change.

I’m never going to be one to quit social media. How else would I get you these wonderful words? But I will admit that I’m loving not feeling the pull of social media constantly in the back of my mind.

Now if I could just stop worrying about my podcast backlog.