I’m Deleting My Social Media and You Should Too

Imagine a world where you pull up the same Wikipedia page as your friend, but instead of viewing the exact same page, they view a page written with a slightly different filter, and their friend views it with another slightly different filter, and so on. All the information you receive is a bit different from one person to the next.

Do you think people would be able to empathize with each other? Do you think we’d be able to use facts to drive progress? Would we know what is true? No, no, and no again.

Fortunately, Wikipedia is not like this. Social media is, and this is the world it’s creating. 

Over half of Americans get their news from social media. I have no doubts numbers are similar worldwide. Most of our country is receiving articles, videos, information, and other content curated exactly to their interests and liking, not to what is necessarily true.

This is bad news. Existentially bad. 

Two months ago, I read Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier and deactivated my social media accounts. Two days ago, I watched The Social Dilemma and am deleting my accounts. I advocate strongly for you to do the same. I believe that social media is an existential threat on the same level as our rampant ecological destruction, systemic racism, and toxic masculinity.

BUMMER Machines

Lanier proposes that social media are B.U.M.M.E.R. machines: Behaviors of Users Modified and Made into an Empire for Rent. These companies are constantly experimenting how they can manipulate our brain and dopamine receptors to keep our attention for longer, bring our friends with us, and expose us to more advertisements for their profit. These companies include Facebook (instagram, whatsapp too), Google (YouTube), Snapchat, LinkedIn, TikTok, and others. 

Social Media is stealing our free will. Our behavior is being manipulated to help these companies make more ad revenue under the guise of connecting with others. When everyone is seeing a curated world blocking out views they disagree with, we all become bigger jerks and lose our ability to empathize with others. I may think the views of somebody who lives halfway across the country (or even next door to me) are absolutely insane. That’s because we are not seeing the same information, making empathy extremely challenging. 

Quitting social media will make you happier as I can already tell it’s made me happier. I was trying to reflect on a time I spent on social media and walked away feeling really happy about things. I couldn’t really even recall a specific memory. The only things I got out of social media were meaningless dopamine hits.

It has made my life (and probably yours) worse, and has had massive societal ramifications too. By far, this is the most civil unrest I’ve experienced and it’s not isolated to the U.S. (Brazil, Myanmar, Hong Kong, etc.). We are all seeing different and often false information, which means social media is undermining truth. Many companies (and social media via its dissemination) are writing/creating content to get your attention, not to report the truth. Media has always had this quality, but it is at such a hyper scale right now that requires we walk away from it. It has been shown that false news spreads six times faster than actual news. Is it any wonder why politics worldwide seem impossible right now? 

We cannot continue to be on social media and expect societal progress.

The Social Dilemma

These Bummer Machines are making obscene amounts of money and it’s not clear what service or benefit they are providing. As The Social Dilemma added, if you don’t know what the product is, you are the product.  Advertisers are the customers. On a fundamental level, you are an object to social media. A collection of data points for sale. You are its tool. A bike is a tool because it sits and waits for you to use it. You are BUMMER’s tool as you sit and wait for it to beckon you. Deceit and sneakiness is at the core of what these companies do. Their business model is disinformation for profit.

Pause. Think about how every day on YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter for example, you see things you never searched for. You did not seek it out. You are being exploited. Your free will is striped daily. Resume.

Though BUMMER may have started with the intention to connect people or bring joy, it has not been the result. Individually, we are unhappier, and globally there is an assault on basic democracy. When the experiment doesn’t yield the results you want, it’s time to try something new, preferably before Frankenstein becomes too powerful to stop. We need a way to create a shared reality and commit to moving forward together.

This is Existentially Bad. But We Can Fix It.

The beauty here is that the solution is unbelievably easy. All you have to do is log in to your accounts one last time and follow the steps to DELETE YOUR ACCOUNTS. 

Google is probably the hardest to get away from, but if you must keep using it, here are some tips provided in The Social Dilemma by former founders and leaders of these companies who now swear against it and don’t let their kids use it either:

1. Never accept a recommendation (i.e. on YouTube or elsewhere). Always deliberately choose.
2. Set your default search engine to something like Qwant or DuckDuckGo that doesn’t store your search results.
3. Turn off all notifications.
4. Don’t click on clickbait.
5. Set a rule to turn off all devices by a certain time and a time for when they can be turned on by in the morning.
6. Avoid social media with your kids until 16 and set time budgets with them on their phones.
7. Put screen covers on all of your devices so these machines can learn less about your facial expressions/reactions. (This one’s mine).

These are all good steps, but the best thing to do is pull it out from its roots. Delete your accounts.

What’s In It For Me? (And You)

I plan to live a life of truth, love, and meaning. I want to control my fate and make my own choices. My best experiences and learnings came not from passively sitting on my phone, but from being active and talking to real human beings.

I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I don’t need. Just as the television is an advertising medium, so is social media. It is just another lever of consumerism where less is more.

It’s time I deleted my Facebook and Instagram for good. My search engines are now Qwant on my computer and DuckDuckGo on my phone. YouTube is blocked. It’s likely only a matter of time before I get rid of my LinkedIn, which has become increasingly BUMMER. For now, I will refuse to look at its Newsfeed. I probably need to take a deep, long look at Gmail/Google Drive as whole. I’m removing the social media share buttons and Instagram feed from this website. My phone is staying out of my bedroom at night.

If you want to connect, I’ll be here :).

Ultimately, I don’t want to pretend to be somebody I’m not. I don’t want to make posts in such a way that makes me appeal to some type of popular consciousness in the hopes for likes, comments, or dopamine hits that provide no actual value or happiness to me. 

I’m excited to experience life more fully and hope you’ll experience it with me too!

Cover Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash