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The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. \u2014Thoreau<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
February 4, 2019 <\/h3>\n
Dinner was mostly cleared from the table, but there were still a few random dishes out, and stray crumbs on the floor from the kids. Cleanup was 90% done, and I was tackling that last 10% in a slow, unhurried manner. As I was at the sink, I heard a giggle or two from the kids, who were playing in the living room. Then those giggles grew into full-on belly laughs, and my wife\u2019s laughter joined the chorus.<\/p>\n
I smiled, instinctively, at the noise.<\/p>\n
As a parent, noise of any kind is often the last thing you want. Silence \u2014 the complete lack of commotion \u2014 is a kind of beautiful non-music to our ears.<\/p>\n
And yet, to hear my family laughing together on the floor . . . that<\/em> was truly an enchanting sound.<\/p>\n
So I turned around to get a look at the action. My 3-year-old son had piled some pillows on the floor, and he and my 11-month-old daughter were taking turns gleefully throwing themselves onto this fluffy mountain. As soon as my wife laid down on those pillows, she became part of the landscape upon which the kids wrestled and rolled. The sublime, joyous, unforced laughter continued.<\/p>\n
And so I just stood there in the kitchen, for a few full minutes at least, taking it all in, the Lumineers providing a movie-like soundtrack for the scene. I know that doesn\u2019t seem long, but in the moment it felt like a rapturous eternity. I simply soaked it in and tried as hard as I could to absorb every detail; I immediately knew this was a moment I\u2019d never want to forget. This<\/em> is the stuff that life, and parenting, is made of.<\/p>\n
After my wife caught me looking, I told her that if I had a heart-o-meter, it would have nuclear exploded.<\/p>\n
____________________<\/p>\n
This particular evening took place a few days after my social media fast ended.<\/p>\n
Before giving up social media for the month of January, I\u2019d spend maybe an hour on it a day, mostly in 5 minute snatches of time scattered through my waking hours \u2014 quick work breaks, waiting in lines, while watching TV at night, etc. I wasn\u2019t \u201caddicted\u201d to social media; I mostly used it as a boredom killer and to entertain myself at night when the kids were in bed. (Late night comedy clips are one of my weaknesses.) I would also spend probably another hour or so dinking around on news apps, sports apps, games, etc.<\/p>\n
After dinner, while the kids usually play for a little bit before bed, was a common time for me to pick up the phone and fool around a bit. I could peruse social media, check sports scores, see what sort of new idiocy Washington, DC was ginning up. I wasn\u2019t necessarily neglecting my family; if the kids called my name or needed their dad\u2019s attention for a minute, I\u2019d easily put the device away and join the rumpus. But then I\u2019d go back to the phone and putter around some more. I wasn\u2019t fully absorbed in either activity; it was more of a scattered presence that didn\u2019t feel fully in the moment to be sure, but also didn\u2019t feel particularly nefarious. It wasn\u2019t like I was holed away in a corner of the house or zombied out on the couch, oblivious to what was happening.<\/p>\n
And yet I have to wonder how many perfect moments \u2014 like the one described above \u2014 I missed out on being fully<\/em> present for. It was quite a sobering thought, to say the very least.<\/p>\n
After deciding to spend 31 days off of social media (and other time-wasting apps, too), and realizing the immense benefits of curtailing my tech use, I\u2019m fully in the camp of what Cal Newport calls the \u201cAttention Resistance.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n
During those 31 days I kept a weekly journal about how the fast was going, and a lesson I took from that particular week.<\/p>\n
While my own insights aren\u2019t prescriptive in nature and won\u2019t apply to everyone in the same ways, I do think they are rather instructive as to what can happen when you radically change your social media and smartphone use.<\/p>\n
Week 1: Realizing Social Media\u2019s Habitual Nature <\/h3>\n
During the late evening hours of New Year\u2019s Eve 2018, after the kids were in bed, I took some time to make a few final scrolls through Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I didn\u2019t mention or post that I was taking January off; I wanted to disappear in silence.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s what I did. I deleted the Facebook app. I deleted the Instagram app. I logged out from all accounts on my phone\u2019s browser (which was where most of the Twitter damage was done).<\/p>\n
I went to bed at 10pm, truly looking forward to starting 2019 on a social media-less foot.<\/p>\n
So, naturally, the 10-month-old baby woke up screaming at about 11:30pm, and wouldn\u2019t go back to sleep until about 1:30am. I didn\u2019t intend to ring in the new year on a conscious level, and yet there I was, rocking a baby to sleep when the clock struck midnight. I\u2019ll admit that my first instinct was to check Facebook. Or Instagram. Anything. I didn\u2019t even want to, really. Just my rebellious human nature coming through there. But I held fast and just closed my eyes.<\/p>\n
And so that first temptation passed without incident.<\/p>\n
____________________<\/p>\n
In the days that followed during week 1, I wanted to check in on my accounts to see how friends and family had rung in the new year. Instead, I texted a few close friends and had nice \u201cconversations\u201d that way. Much better than scrolling through a feed and not interacting at all \u2014 which is generally what happens.<\/p>\n
The most interesting thing about this first week was what not having those apps on my phone did to those habitual boredom-busting tactics. Normally, I\u2019d unlock my phone, and almost instinctively tap on the blue \u201cf\u201d or the purplish camera icon, just to see if any notifications came in, or if anyone in my network had some major life event.<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019d unlock my phone and just sort of stare at it, not really sure what to do. Eventually, I\u2019d click around on various apps \u2014 weather, games, Amazon (shopping, not reading) \u2014 and quickly get bored and shut \u2018er down.<\/p>\n
On social media, you don\u2019t have to make any decisions about what to do<\/em>. The infinite scroll keeps you engaged for . . . well, ever. When you open a weather app, you check the weather for about 10 seconds, and that\u2019s it. When you shop online, you have to intentionally look for something; endlessly clicking on related products gets old pretty quickly. Without those infinite scrolls beckoning for your attention, you realize that your phone isn\u2019t such an alluring device. It\u2019s just a little brick that\u2019s supposed to make your life easier; it\u2019s not<\/em> supposed to enslave your attention.<\/p>\n
(Games of course offer plenty of time-wasting opportunity, but something about being 30 has made me sort of cringe at myself when I play games on my phone, so it doesn\u2019t happen too much, and I in fact just recently deleted the last of those games. I\u2019m a grown man for crying out loud!)<\/p>\n
The Lesson: This first insight is in truly learning that social media is much<\/em> more of a mindless habit \u2014 and a very strongly ingrained one \u2014 than a pleasurable or fulfilling activity. We do it out of compulsion rather than intention. <\/strong><\/p>\n
Week 2: Missing the Benefits of Social Media<\/h3>\n
Week 2 started as a breeze, really. To be honest, I had been turned off by social media for a while, and it felt pretty easy to step away from it. To my mind, this meant I was actually quite ready for a break and just needed an excuse to do it. Perhaps that\u2019s all you<\/em> need too \u2014 an excuse to cut it out of your life.<\/p>\n
The reality of the world we live in means that I wasn\u2019t actually missing much. My wife would text or email me memes, which was almost more of a fun and personal way to encounter them. Hangouts with friends would inevitably bring up newsy topics that I hadn\u2019t really been privy to. And sometimes, things just fully slipped over my head and turned out to be entirely unimportant. (I had no awareness of that Gillette ad and the mushroom of reaction it caused until, like all flash-in-the-pan sparks of outrage, it had almost completely disappeared from the pop culture spotlight, leaving nothing of real significance behind.) It was nice to run into these things tangentially in the course of conversation rather than having spent hours online.<\/p>\n
But then, I ran into a few instances where being on social media \u2014 particularly Facebook \u2014 would actually have been beneficial.<\/p>\n
One morning I was texting with a good friend about biscuits and gravy. Weird, I know, so a little bit of context: I was having some at home, and back in our college days this friend and I would have boatloads of the stuff together. Little did I know that his daughter was actually in the ICU at that very moment. Had I been on social media, I would have known, and I wouldn\u2019t have texted about biscuits and gravy. I only knew about the sick daughter because my wife said something, and I ended up feeling like a bit of a cad (though it is possible he welcomed the silly distraction). I then of course texted him that we were thinking about their family and would do anything we could to help; I also called after realizing that texting wasn\u2019t quite the right medium for conveying those thoughts.<\/p>\n
In a similar narrative, I had a different friend from college with a young son who\u2019d been dealing with cancer for much of 2018. Ten years out of college, we weren\u2019t close enough to be on texting or calling terms, but I was certainly interested in what was going on with his family. Without being on social media, I was missing those updates on how he and his kid were doing. (The little guy is now doing very well and pretty much has a clean bill of health!)<\/p>\n
Facebook, for the enormous unethical cesspool that it is, actually provides some benefit to my life; it\u2019s not fully just mindless entertainment. I can keep up with people who are important to me without having to send a dozen \u201cHey what\u2019s going on?\u201d texts. If you cull your friends list to just those you truly care about (rather than those you barely know or people you only follow because you sort of like to hate their posts), you\u2019ll end up with a newsfeed that provides some value.<\/p>\n
The real trick with social media is actually weighing those benefits vs. the costs. Before my fast, the amount of time spent on Facebook was not in line with what I was getting out of it. My time on Twitter and Instagram were in the same boat. I was spending too much life<\/em> \u2014 in Thoreau\u2019s words \u2014 on the minuscule benefit I was getting. So after the fast, as I\u2019ll dig into a little later, I ditched Twitter completely and reduced my time on Instagram and Facebook to better match the benefit they were providing.<\/p>\n
The Lesson: Social media does<\/em> have actual benefits; it takes a break, though, to realize what they are. <\/strong>Once you\u2019ve had a break, and found some of those real benefits, you can go back to it in a far healthier, and assuredly less time-consuming way. After my fast, I quickly came to realize I could legitimately keep up with the more significant updates my friends\u2019 and family post on social media in just 10-15 minutes per week.<\/p>\n
Week 3: Dealing With Boredom<\/h3>\n
The novelty of the fast was quickly wearing off by week 3. I was finding myself more often in the throes of boredom. At first, the fast was kind of exciting \u2014 almost a self-righteous feeling of knowing I wasn\u2019t wasting my life on scrolling. But by week 3 that feeling was waning. I noticed it mostly while waiting \u2014 waiting in line anywhere, waiting for my young son to finish going to the bathroom, waiting 5 minutes for my pour over to finish up at the coffee shop, waiting at Walmart for a tire to be patched (I forgot to bring reading material), waiting for the gas tank to fill up . . . <\/p>\n
These small bits of time began to feel excruciatingly long \u2014 embarrassingly so, actually. What did it say about me, I wondered, that I get achingly bored after just a couple minutes with nothing to do?<\/p>\n
I quickly realized that life offers plenty<\/em> of waiting, and social media is seemingly the perfect<\/em> antidote \u2014 which is why those companies are some of the world\u2019s most valuable. There\u2019s always something new and it doesn\u2019t take any of what I call \u201cramping up\u201d to get into. (With reading, for example, it can take a few minutes to get into the flow of it, but many times the wait you\u2019re in the midst of only lasts that long.) Social media can be accessed and de-accessed in mere seconds, and the result is no boredom ever again<\/em>. In theory, at least. Of course you still get bored with your feeds, you just don\u2019t realize it, because you keep on mindlessly scrolling.<\/p>\n
The problem is that boredom can actually be good for you.<\/a> It fosters thinking. Real<\/em> thinking. With your brain! What a novel idea. I know that sounds silly, but it really is a bit unique in our world. Instead of diverting to social media with every minute that doesn\u2019t have an allocated activity, I\u2019ve learned to try to actively be thinking about something \u2014 planning my day\/week, thinking through a decision that needs to be made, \u201cwriting\u201d in my head and working out ideas, or even just plain zoning out. While I\u2019m still bored when waiting around in line, and it\u2019s still sometimes a little painful, I\u2019ve come to embrace it as best I can. And my mind truly feels more focused \u2014 less scattered and more on top of things \u2014 because of it.<\/p>\n
The Lesson:<\/strong> Embrace the boredom. Use it to think about something. Or not.<\/strong> It may be painful, but your brain will thank you. If nothing else, keeping your phone put away while waiting for stuff will break the hold that your phone has over your every spare moment (and those spare moments are dang valuable \u2014 if used intentionally<\/a>).<\/p>\n
Week 4: A New Philosophy of Social Media & General Phone Use<\/h3>\n
As my experiment was coming to a close, I started to think seriously about how to let social media back into my life. Cal Newport accurately writes in Digital Minimalism<\/em><\/a> that as consumers we just sort of slid into using these services and apps. They seemed to offer some benefit and some entertainment, so there wasn\u2019t a need to be all that thoughtful and intentional about their use. But now, a decade or so after their introduction, we\u2019ve seen how much time and attention those devices and services can take from us. It\u2019s time to step back and think critically about the role they should play in our lives — to develop a real philosophy<\/em> around our use of technology.<\/p>\n
Newport argues for putting pretty stringent \u201crules\u201d in place for yourself when it comes to social media and device usage. Make them as specific and in-depth as is necessary \u2014 setting time limits on things and limiting your access<\/a> (with other apps, like Freedom<\/a>, if needed). The small caveat is that if you\u2019re naturally pretty disciplined about this stuff, you may not need to be as specific. This is the case with me; after making a living on the internet for the last 6 years, I\u2019ve had ample practice in self-discipline in that particular realm. So my own rules didn\u2019t need to be so hard and fast, but yours very well may.<\/p>\n
What I came up with:<\/p>\n
1. I would reinstall Instagram on my phone, but only use it to post pics 1-2 times per week<\/a><\/strong> (of books I\u2019m reading, some of my baking creations, and weekend hikes). For me, it provides hiking\/cooking inspiration and some beneficial personal branding without the vitriol found on Twitter and Facebook. I really wish Instagram was easier to post to from a laptop\/desktop, but oh well. I\u2019d spend no more than a few minutes every 2-3 days scrolling.<\/p>\n
2. I would not reinstall Facebook on my phone.<\/strong> I\u2019d use it only on my computer, for no more than a few minutes every other day. When I see something I want to \u201clike\u201d or comment on, I\u2019ll shoot a text or an email instead. I want social media to be a supplement<\/em> for my social interactions, not a replacement<\/em>. I\u2019ll occasionally post pics of the kids, because that\u2019s what my family and close friends most like to see. (I do also really enjoy using the \u201cOn This Day\u201d feature, which provides a nice dose of nostalgia from pics you posted on that day in years past.)<\/p>\n
3. I would abandon Twitter altogether.<\/strong> It was clear during my fast that I received no actual benefit from it, other than stress- and eye-roll-inducing news items. I also came to realize that things that seemed important on Twitter \u2014 from “news” to overwrought outrage at various things \u2014 weren\u2019t actually important at all in the real world.<\/p>\n
4. I would buy a cheap smartwatch to give me notifications of texts and work emails. <\/strong>I\u2019d always been mostly in the hater camp when it comes to smartwatches, so this came as a surprise even to me, but as I thought about it more, it made more and more sense. Part of my checking my phone so much was to see texts and important work emails that came through. My wife works in health care, and we like to text throughout the day when we can, and she often only has a few spare minutes at a time. So it\u2019s important to me to see things from her right when they come in. Same goes for the occasional work email that requires immediate attention. That doesn\u2019t happen too often, but when it does, I want to be on my toes. So, I ended up checking my phone a lot just to see if there were new texts or emails, which more often than not led to other time-wasting activities. In getting a cheap smartwatch<\/a> that gives my wrist a little vibration on incoming texts and work emails, I can know within a second or two if something needs attention and if I need to reach for my phone or not. Pretty dang handy, actually.<\/p>\n
The Lesson: Take the time to really think about your philosophy \u2014 and even specific rules \u2014 about your social media and smartphone usage. <\/strong><\/p>\n
Concluding Thoughts<\/h3>\n
My month off of social media was far more insightful than I thought it would be. After being away for 4 weeks, it oddly felt like it would be more<\/em> work to jump fully back into the fray and keep up with what was going on. It sounded exhausting, actually. I\u2019m now far more intent on using my phone for thoughtful, purposeful actions rather than letting it<\/em> control how I use my time.<\/p>\n
A month after coming up with the rules above, I can emphatically say it\u2019s all worked without a hitch. I actually now just naturally get bored after more than a couple minutes on Facebook and Instagram every few days \u2014 a result that many of the social media fasters profiled in Digital Minimalism<\/em> experienced as well. I know that sounds sort of holier-than-thou, but it\u2019s the honest-to-goodness truth. And the smartwatch has been surprisingly useful; I\u2019m not reaching for my phone nearly as much, so my overall usage of it has gone down drastically (to less than half of what it was before, according to Apple\u2019s Screen Time app). It\u2019s made a significant, appreciable difference in my life.<\/p>\n
Everyone uses (and perhaps struggles with) social media and phone usage in different ways. While I think everyone<\/em> should take a social media fast \u2014 of at least 30 days \u2014 what you find out about yourself and your digital consumption will vary from my own results. My lessons were very much individual to me; whether or not they relate to you will depend on your own social media habits, and the particular parts of it you\u2019d like to see change.<\/p>\n
The whole point is that I wouldn\u2019t have learned any of this stuff without that fast. So the only prescriptive part of this article is to implore you to take your own 30-day break from social media and other time-wasting apps. As Newport argues, it\u2019s only in temporarily wiping the slate clean, that you can figure out what really matters and what\u2019s really important when it comes to your devices and apps. Then you can truly know what you want to re-introduce into your life, and be able to use what you do bring back in an intentional, fully conscious, life-enhancing-rather-than-life-squandering way.<\/p>\n
Be sure to listen to our podcast with Cal Newport for even more about digital minimalism:<\/strong><\/p>\n