jadanzzy

This blog serves as an outlet for me in the way that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have all served in their individual ways. So long-form thought pieces, random links to interesting things, personal pictures, and tweet-like writing will occupy this space.

I'm paying nearly $12/year to Hover for the jadanzzy.com domain, and $60/year to Write.as for their security and privacy-focused blogging platform. $72/year is a stark contrast to paying nothing for the pleasure of putting my life via multimedia on those major social media platforms. Well, I don't have to pay for my own domain, but I'm vain. Either way, I'm trying to put my money where my mouth is and act on my disdain for those companies. Let's see how long it lasts, though.

Over the last 6-8 months, I've grown increasingly skeptical of social media as a concept. It started when I realized, in a moment of self-awareness, that I'd find myself picking up my iPhone during moments of boredom, opening Instagram, mindlessly scrolling through the wall of posts I didn't find interesting (sorry friends and family), and then closing Instagram after 60-90 seconds.

It was a bad habit—something I did to free me from the otherwise healthy experience of being bored and letting my brain wander. Instead, I wanted to be stimulated, made to feel amused, envious, annoyed, or upset, in the brief moment I had before I had to think about life again. But I wasn't. So when I became aware of my habit, I was annoyed with myself.

At the same time, I started learning about the negative impact that social media has on mental health, on relationships, and on society. I was learning about how these companies do everything they can to keep you engaged, to excite those neurotransmitters that leave you wanting more, and use your engagement to sell your anonymized data to advertisers, their actual customers.

I'll be honest. On Instagram, getting a bunch of ❤️s made me feel great. I spent a lot of time editing and curating what I posted. For what? Those hearts, baby. I obsessively (yeah, it's true) checked who viewed my stories. I felt a tinge of sadness when no one liked my Facebook posts. I felt stupid and uncool when no one liked my Twitter posts because of who I knew was following me. I was enslaved by the desire to know I was humoring someone else.

Even with Write.as, I have access to stats. It'll encourage the same behavior and scratch the same itch, won't it?

How sad, but I know I'm in the majority with my feelings. Even sadder.

Some other real problems of social media:

• While it gives voice to the voiceless that deserve to be heard, it also gives voice to those who don't deserve one at all—the racists, sexists, conspiracy theorists and wacko religious figures, hate-mongers of all stripes.
• It provides a platform to malicious actors who wish to manipulate an electorate or broadcast dangerous acts of violence against people groups.
• It makes us dangerously tribalistic.
• It allows uninformed citizens to spread misinformation, eventually causing harm to the entire society.
• It encourages us to simplify our otherwise complex lives in order to paint rosier versions of them, or create false personas of ourselves that end up getting us killed.
• It makes us feel lonely.
• It allows the disturbed and self-interested to encourage toddlers and young children to commit self-harm, disturb them emotionally, or turn them into sexual victims.
• And on and on...

I believe I'm surrounded by well-adjusted friends and family who I know are resilient and informed enough to not be irreversibly swayed or damaged by the negative effects of social media. They don't share incendiary or misleading things. They usually write harmless things about their personal lives, post pictures of their kids, videos of a concert they're at, or share reality-based information that they hope would be a net benefit to others.

But no one is immune from social media's micro-effects. Who has the time to vigorously fact-check rapidly shared and false rumors about Hillary Clinton? Who would post an Instagram Live video of a bad fight with their spouse? Who goes out of their way to follow those with differing opinions on Twitter so as to not be trapped in an echo chamber?

...

While there may be a better silver bullet to cure the ills that stem from social media, I think there's one small and intermediate step that can help slow the damage.

Kill free social media

In other words, make people pay out of their own pockets for the privilege to use social media. While it's not nearly enough of a barrier for the worst of us, I think it could reduce the activities stemming from underbelly of the internet that sometimes surfaces to the top to hurt us. Yes, I hypothesize that being forced to pay even just $5 a month for each of our social media accounts would be a deterrent.

Who am I kidding, though? As much as many of us won't delete our social media accounts (including me, e.g. Twitter!), it'd be harder to pay $5/month to pay for the pleasure to use one.

But maybe that's a good thing. Not using social media. Maybe that's the key to a lot of this. Maybe I have to see my friends in person more (I like that). Call them on the phone (Ew). Send messages (using only a secure service like iMessage, though, right?) Send emails (sigh). Which leads to another thing. Do I have to seriously consider switching to a non-free email service?

Free is addictive. Free is convenient. Free is enabling. Free isn't usually free. I'm not free from it.