I’ve kept Facebook and IG because of family or childhood friends who are on it, but I’ve set daily time limits on them. I’ve also moved most apps to my tablet and not my phone. My biggest issue is that some of my closest friends insist on communicating through WhatsApp, and my neighborhood watch is on it too, but you cannot use it on the tablet without it also being on the phone. I hate Meta!
The (a) word that kept jumping out at me, directly or indirectly, is isolation. It’s discouraging that, when someone is not talking to another someone face to face (think someone who’s friended to a person you’re friended with but don’t know), he/she is willing to say downright vile things - things your momma taught you to never say directly to a person’s face. Social media sites seem to bare this flaw in human character. Yet people seem to relish that fight. It’s astounding we survive as a species.
Amen! I'm a Millennial who quit social media in January of this year, and it's one of the best things I've ever done for my brain and overall health. I'm also way more well-informed than I was a year ago, and Substack newsletters (like yours, read at designated times of day) have been perfect for this. I still randomly compulsively try to check my phone and just end up scrolling through recipes on my cooking app. I will try your "treat it as a landline" trick just to help break the compulsion. Thanks for a great article!
It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me to suggest Big Tech, the guys that own the social media of which you speak, supported Trump, bought the election, not just because they're terrible hateful bigots like Trump, Musk and Thiel obviously are, but to secure tax cuts for the already ridiculously rich and fend off Dem wagons (Bidenomics) circling to raise their taxes, Lina Kahn enforcing antitrust against their monopolyzing billions, and eventually the Dems might get around to regulating social media with some kind of reasonable Section 230 or Fairness Doctrine-like reforms, which Big Tech wants no part of, of course. That's not Bezos' "free markets." Yes, we should get off their social media. And where we can boycott their businesses, although hard since they own everything.
Your defense of Bluesky tracks for me, but it's also worth noting that a lot of the services you mention (like Bluesky and Substack) that still allow users to see mostly what they choose to see tend to be newer players in the social media space, still trying to build up their user base. This incentivizes them to actually offer a higher quality experience, because people aren't "locked in" yet, but keep in mind Facebook and Twitter used to be like this, until they weren't. Enshittification is basically a law of business for proprietary platforms, and it's likely only a matter of time before these newer "good" platforms head down that path too.
For me, I avoid investing in any platforms that have the potential to gain the kind of leverage over users needed to retain them despite enshittification, which mostly means avoiding anything with DRM or any IP that restricts interoperability or freely transferring data out. Substack is iffy -- they really ought to enable some sort of token-based authentication to download subscription content to third-party readers. I'm at least avoiding the "feed" and the app and just heading manually to the handful of Substacks I subscribe to using browser bookmarks.
This feels like a magnum opus. I know this won’t be the landmark of what I’m confident will be a storied career in data journalism, but I’m astonished by the breadth. You’ve done a great public service, Elliott.
I wonder if there's any way we can effectively get rid of algorithmic social media. It really does seem like the cigarettes of millenials/gen z; we all know its bad and yet we use it anyway. I personally have no clue how we fix it but clearly we need to do something. People voluntarily quitting social media won't be enough to blunt its influence unfortunately.
except for us old-school extremely nearsighted and therefore never-got-addicted-to-our-phones folks, the laptop Mac is the PRIMARY place to see texts!
+++
Really appreciate this long essay on ills of social media, especially the cited studies confirming and unpacking gut feelings and sound bites on "algorithmic" feeds.
+++
One avenue for further exploration, maybe -- the Fediverse? Cory Doctorow a few years back on why he won't use Bluesky, and why the comparatively locally "user"-controlled fediverse is the future....
"I poured years and endless hours into establishing myself on walled garden services administered with varying degrees of competence and benevolence, only to have those services use my own sunk costs to trap me within their silos even as they siphoned value from my side of the ledger to their own.
"Look, I’m 52 years old. I used to be way more interested in how things worked. Now I’m interested in how they fail. I don’t care how good the administration of Bluesky or Threads is today— I care about what happens if it sours tomorrow.
[snip]
"Free and open source software licenses, as well as Creative Commons licenses are Ulysses Pacts. These are irrevocable licenses, which means that you can’t decide to take your code or art back from the commons once you put it in there.
[snip]
"Mastodon is far from perfect. But I only have so many hours in the day, and only so many days left in my life. I would much rather spend those precious hours making an open service better than using a temporarily superior closed one. I have seen that movie. I know how it ends.
"The more effort we put into making Bluesky and Threads good, the more we tempt their managers to break their promises and never open up federation.
[snip]
"Enshittification isn’t merely the result of greed or foolishness — it is the inevitable consequence of a captive userbase."
"I have no interest in seeing AI-generated Twitter posts of Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan (as an angel), and Tucker Carlson praying over Gavin Newsom (yes, this is a real Twitter post sent by the Governor of California)"
yes and, that's Newsom trolling the maga cult, which is unhealthy but satisfying
Precisely because social media algorithms make it impossible to promote anything online to a wide audience anymore, I'm going to take the opportunity to flag for you good people the We Ain't Buying It campaign for a short, targeted boycott of Target, Amazon, and Home Depot over the big shopping days around Thanksgiving. I invite you to participate and share it with real live people you know. weaintbuyingit.com
So, I haven't read this yet but I have to say that 10 years ago I deleted my social media accounts except for LinkedIn (I chose never to create a Twitter account) and then deleted that almost 3 years ago. I also pretty much never watch any news or podcasts - instead, I read everything. (Give me a transcript!). I'm sharing this because, virtue-signaling aside, I realized that social media/information overload was/is making me sick. I see it making everybody sick. The medium is the message and it's not a good message.
Edit:
Great article! I've been using what you call the "Phone Foyer Method" for a long time! I'm old enough to remember corded telephones and a place in the house where you sat to use them. I leave my phone plugged or in it's "spot" unless I'm outside my home and I have a comfortable chair to use for calls.
These are all good suggestions. One thing for me is that I still do a large amount of news/substack reading. Too much, but these are uniquely troubled times. I've had to work very hard to claw back my attention span for offline reading. I try to start and end my day with fiction (actual physical public library books!) or light essays on non-political subjects instead of news (bad news).
It's a hopeful sign that more people are leaving social media. At last.
On Bluesky/X/Twitter, I don't use "For You" and instead go straight to people whose posts I want to read (like you!). So I don't get the results of the algorithm.
There is still a risk of confirmation bias due to who I choose to read, but that's kind of true in life.
So I think it's also how you use it. Though as a boomer, it's easy for me disengage because I didn't have it for the first 2/3 of my life.
Modern smartphones are better about this, eg you can set your phone not to charge above 80% unless you’re going to travel/have a long day in the office/whatever.
Maybe this is a small issue, but because I’m never on my phone more than an hour or two a day, it lasts as long as I need.
I’ve kept Facebook and IG because of family or childhood friends who are on it, but I’ve set daily time limits on them. I’ve also moved most apps to my tablet and not my phone. My biggest issue is that some of my closest friends insist on communicating through WhatsApp, and my neighborhood watch is on it too, but you cannot use it on the tablet without it also being on the phone. I hate Meta!
The (a) word that kept jumping out at me, directly or indirectly, is isolation. It’s discouraging that, when someone is not talking to another someone face to face (think someone who’s friended to a person you’re friended with but don’t know), he/she is willing to say downright vile things - things your momma taught you to never say directly to a person’s face. Social media sites seem to bare this flaw in human character. Yet people seem to relish that fight. It’s astounding we survive as a species.
Amen! I'm a Millennial who quit social media in January of this year, and it's one of the best things I've ever done for my brain and overall health. I'm also way more well-informed than I was a year ago, and Substack newsletters (like yours, read at designated times of day) have been perfect for this. I still randomly compulsively try to check my phone and just end up scrolling through recipes on my cooking app. I will try your "treat it as a landline" trick just to help break the compulsion. Thanks for a great article!
Love, StormedTheCapitol69420
It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me to suggest Big Tech, the guys that own the social media of which you speak, supported Trump, bought the election, not just because they're terrible hateful bigots like Trump, Musk and Thiel obviously are, but to secure tax cuts for the already ridiculously rich and fend off Dem wagons (Bidenomics) circling to raise their taxes, Lina Kahn enforcing antitrust against their monopolyzing billions, and eventually the Dems might get around to regulating social media with some kind of reasonable Section 230 or Fairness Doctrine-like reforms, which Big Tech wants no part of, of course. That's not Bezos' "free markets." Yes, we should get off their social media. And where we can boycott their businesses, although hard since they own everything.
Your defense of Bluesky tracks for me, but it's also worth noting that a lot of the services you mention (like Bluesky and Substack) that still allow users to see mostly what they choose to see tend to be newer players in the social media space, still trying to build up their user base. This incentivizes them to actually offer a higher quality experience, because people aren't "locked in" yet, but keep in mind Facebook and Twitter used to be like this, until they weren't. Enshittification is basically a law of business for proprietary platforms, and it's likely only a matter of time before these newer "good" platforms head down that path too.
For me, I avoid investing in any platforms that have the potential to gain the kind of leverage over users needed to retain them despite enshittification, which mostly means avoiding anything with DRM or any IP that restricts interoperability or freely transferring data out. Substack is iffy -- they really ought to enable some sort of token-based authentication to download subscription content to third-party readers. I'm at least avoiding the "feed" and the app and just heading manually to the handful of Substacks I subscribe to using browser bookmarks.
This feels like a magnum opus. I know this won’t be the landmark of what I’m confident will be a storied career in data journalism, but I’m astonished by the breadth. You’ve done a great public service, Elliott.
Thanks L!
I wonder if there's any way we can effectively get rid of algorithmic social media. It really does seem like the cigarettes of millenials/gen z; we all know its bad and yet we use it anyway. I personally have no clue how we fix it but clearly we need to do something. People voluntarily quitting social media won't be enough to blunt its influence unfortunately.
I forgot to put this in the article, but another thing I recommend is turning off iMessage on your computer. That's what your phone is for!
except for us old-school extremely nearsighted and therefore never-got-addicted-to-our-phones folks, the laptop Mac is the PRIMARY place to see texts!
+++
Really appreciate this long essay on ills of social media, especially the cited studies confirming and unpacking gut feelings and sound bites on "algorithmic" feeds.
+++
One avenue for further exploration, maybe -- the Fediverse? Cory Doctorow a few years back on why he won't use Bluesky, and why the comparatively locally "user"-controlled fediverse is the future....
"I poured years and endless hours into establishing myself on walled garden services administered with varying degrees of competence and benevolence, only to have those services use my own sunk costs to trap me within their silos even as they siphoned value from my side of the ledger to their own.
"Look, I’m 52 years old. I used to be way more interested in how things worked. Now I’m interested in how they fail. I don’t care how good the administration of Bluesky or Threads is today— I care about what happens if it sours tomorrow.
[snip]
"Free and open source software licenses, as well as Creative Commons licenses are Ulysses Pacts. These are irrevocable licenses, which means that you can’t decide to take your code or art back from the commons once you put it in there.
[snip]
"Mastodon is far from perfect. But I only have so many hours in the day, and only so many days left in my life. I would much rather spend those precious hours making an open service better than using a temporarily superior closed one. I have seen that movie. I know how it ends.
"The more effort we put into making Bluesky and Threads good, the more we tempt their managers to break their promises and never open up federation.
[snip]
"Enshittification isn’t merely the result of greed or foolishness — it is the inevitable consequence of a captive userbase."
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/
"I have no interest in seeing AI-generated Twitter posts of Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan (as an angel), and Tucker Carlson praying over Gavin Newsom (yes, this is a real Twitter post sent by the Governor of California)"
yes and, that's Newsom trolling the maga cult, which is unhealthy but satisfying
Excellent article. Thank you!
Unwanted text messages are also a plague. Thank you!
Precisely because social media algorithms make it impossible to promote anything online to a wide audience anymore, I'm going to take the opportunity to flag for you good people the We Ain't Buying It campaign for a short, targeted boycott of Target, Amazon, and Home Depot over the big shopping days around Thanksgiving. I invite you to participate and share it with real live people you know. weaintbuyingit.com
Noted, posted (on social media 🤷🏻♀️ ) and saved, with thanks!
Related sentiments from a former Meta product manager:
https://messyprogress.substack.com/p/going-phoneless
So, I haven't read this yet but I have to say that 10 years ago I deleted my social media accounts except for LinkedIn (I chose never to create a Twitter account) and then deleted that almost 3 years ago. I also pretty much never watch any news or podcasts - instead, I read everything. (Give me a transcript!). I'm sharing this because, virtue-signaling aside, I realized that social media/information overload was/is making me sick. I see it making everybody sick. The medium is the message and it's not a good message.
Edit:
Great article! I've been using what you call the "Phone Foyer Method" for a long time! I'm old enough to remember corded telephones and a place in the house where you sat to use them. I leave my phone plugged or in it's "spot" unless I'm outside my home and I have a comfortable chair to use for calls.
These are all good suggestions. One thing for me is that I still do a large amount of news/substack reading. Too much, but these are uniquely troubled times. I've had to work very hard to claw back my attention span for offline reading. I try to start and end my day with fiction (actual physical public library books!) or light essays on non-political subjects instead of news (bad news).
It's a hopeful sign that more people are leaving social media. At last.
nobody should take my anti-social media writing as an argument to delete their subscription to this Substack ;)
Ha ha! No, yours is absolutely on my list of essential reading.
On Bluesky/X/Twitter, I don't use "For You" and instead go straight to people whose posts I want to read (like you!). So I don't get the results of the algorithm.
There is still a risk of confirmation bias due to who I choose to read, but that's kind of true in life.
So I think it's also how you use it. Though as a boomer, it's easy for me disengage because I didn't have it for the first 2/3 of my life.
Good, though IIRC the following tab is also algo-ranked among the people you follow, and some posts that perform poorly will get hidden from you.
I like the idea of a phone space. Isn't it bad for the battery to keep it plugged into a charger all the time, though? Or is that a myth?
Modern smartphones are better about this, eg you can set your phone not to charge above 80% unless you’re going to travel/have a long day in the office/whatever.
Maybe this is a small issue, but because I’m never on my phone more than an hour or two a day, it lasts as long as I need.