Ch. 1: Hard to Follow - A Decade on the Outside of Social Media
Pure Interaction, No Distraction
On the day I turned thirty-two years old, I looked down at the little life assistant of mine known as a smartphone. It sat next to the laptop I plugged away at daily for professional life during morning hours and personal creative writing that filled my evenings. While these devices were commonplace in my routine, the tabletops they adorned were not.
In fact, they often were not tables at all.
Sometimes, it was the hood of a dusty, weather-worn Jeep Wrangler. Other days, it was whatever surface I could find at some small-town coffee shop or rest stop along a quiet highway. On this birthday, it was the front porch of a historic home in a tiny mountain valley town of southwestern New Mexico.
Famous for its odd name, Truth or Consequences was one of the more peculiar stops along my travels. Renamed in 1950 after a popular radio quiz show, the destination has a long history of attracting travelers to it beautiful hot springs along the Rio Grande River. A perfect place to enjoy the beginning of my new year and recharge before hitting the road once again.
As a program manager at a large corporate technology company, I transitioned to “working remote” early in 2020, as the pandemic ushered in a new era of Work from Home normalcy. A year in to mastering the flow of self-scheduling and creating my own productivity space, I decided to hit the road. With my four-door Wrangler, multiple decades’ worth of camping and hiking experience, and an unlimited cellular data plan, I ventured into the (semi) permanent road trip life.
My work environment now changed as regularly as my zip code. More than thirty thousand miles across twelve states meant my office space became amorphous as the spreadsheets, presentations, and emails that occupied my desktop screen.
Every-evolving, never monotonous.
After more than a year of adventuring, enjoying my morning coffee against the backdrop of desert plains with snowy mountain caps in the distance was as part of work-life balance as taking a mind-clearing lunch break was previously .
The smartphone I own now and the many I used in the past would be recognizable to everyone. So too would the laptop, and other mobile technology tools in my arsenal. In a typical tech-consumer sense, I am not that different than the average millennial.
Except in one, small way.
I don't do social media. And I never really have.
The last decade’s innovations forced all aspects of personal and professional life to take on a digital form. Social media permeated every inch of political, cultural, and interpersonal life. After years pushing head-first into the strong headwinds, people are just beginning to look behind them and reflect on the consequences of embracing social media so fully.
The desire to understand how this technological revolution changes us to our core has never left the forefront of my mind. I suppose I am calibrated for self-discovery at all costs.
Truth or consequences, indeed.
How is it that my pocket companion stays free of the most widely used applications on earth?
It started in 2007, during a summer spent in Japan. Facebook's “status update” feature was relatively new. Amidst unique cultural experiences, like planting rice and sweeping the grounds of Buddhist temples, I found myself more concerned with what photos and caption to post later that day than the experiences themselves.
I was actively practicing being absent.
This removal from living in the moment did not feel right. Posting status updates seemed a small yet consistent move in the wrong direction.
This realization initiated my discomfort with the idea of letting the reception of others determine the value of my words and experiences. It felt unhealthy at its core.
A decade and a half since that summer in Japan, here is my one, epic status update:
I have never sent a tweet. I have never scrolled on Instagram. I have never been followed or retweeted. I have never been trolled, DM'ed, or “slid” into someone else’s. I have never viewed even one livestream or news article on Facebook.
What have my efforts spared me?
Wasting massive chunks of my day scrolling through feeds. Developing my sense of self and self-worth around the portrayed lives of others I do not know personally and never will. Thinking I am still in touch with people I have not directly spoken with for years, simply because I can view their status updates and assume I know them.
Allowing my interests, purchasing decisions, and sociopolitical leanings to be influenced by actors and power structures outside of my visibility and control. Losing time, energy, and brain cells to boredom content, reaction porn, and Tik Tok dance videos.
Consider me especially grateful for avoiding the latter.
Not participating in social media should not be noteworthy. And yet, in today’s world, it is exceedingly rare for someone my age.
I do not know how it feels to entertain the negative opinion of someone I have never met. No one did, ten years ago. The only people in my life are friends, family, neighbors, or coworkers. I have no followers, fans, or haters. The only people who know my personal life are the ones that fill it.
I am the most adventurous person I know. Sailing the seas, climbing mountains, hiking deserts, swimming rivers, exploring small towns, braving ice plunges, camping forests, and trekking forgotten roads would be fitting descriptions for my eventual grave’s epitaph. My friends and family know this is true, because they regularly receive the photos and videos chronicling my journeys throughout my adulthood.
Besides them, no one else has any idea how I spend my free time.
Why?
Because there is no Instagram for strangers and casual acquaintances to browse my adventures like a travel channel. I have no interest in looking cool for eyeballs obscured by anonymous curiosity. I hold no desire to impress others with accomplishments and feats meant to bring value to my life, not notoriety, popularity, or clout.
Nobody occupies their digital platform profiles with the lackluster aspects of their life, even though each person’s life is full of imperfections. These digital avatars are an opportunity to showcase the best impression of us.
If you spend years crafting social media presence like this, then at what point are you living your life more for likes and attention than for yourself?
Eventually, how would you even know the difference?
My time on the outside of the social media universe has gradually taught me a clear truth that continues to grow clearer. Most Americans are spending a lot of time in a world that does not really exist.
We have lost sight of the fact that social media has no inherent power. It permeates our lives as much as we let it.
"Out of sight, out of mind” quickly lost its meaning, as social media expanded our sight exponentially.
Sharing is no longer caring. Every surface level thought and emotional gut reaction is out there for the world to see and judge. This past decade vivified a deep appreciation for the mental and emotional benefits of fully dictating my social interactions, free of clandestine frameworks and nebulous profit models.
If society was fully ready to completely immerse in the digital realm, then I would say “Bon Voyage” and leave my peers to their new path.
And yet, we are not quite there yet, are we?
Every aspect of human existence, from dating to career to entertainment, is stuck in transition between the real world and the nascent landscape behind our devices’ glass panels. Our human brains, eyeballs, and fingers are limiting elements binding us to the shore as we eagerly move to submerge in an online ocean.
Because of this, a balance must be struck between where humanity has been and where it is going.
Why have I met ZERO peers in fifteen years that actively question this balance and how to achieve it? Why are there so few voices advocating for a tempered approach to avoid moving backwards in how we relate to our fellow man as we move forward technologically?
From 2015 to 2020, I worked at Google on developing emerging technologies and their integration into consumer products. Two of these years included projects that collected and utilized geolocation tracking and user data. In the past six years, I personally owned over thirty smartphones, as a mobile tech enthusiast and reseller. There were also additional models I utilized professionally for product development.
Clearly, I am not averse to the incredible devices and services created with human data and machine learning, nor the companies that build them. I consider social media in that camp, as it has connected millions and produced unfathomable opportunity.
But my professional experience in Big Tech only strengthened my view that limiting how much personal information I put online is a good idea.
Our data paid for the tech giants’ meteoric rise to success, and now that data is creating and perfecting artificial intelligence at a terrifying pace.
Since its incipiency, my active non-participation was often ill received. Friends considered it antisocial. Some ex-partners found it suspicious. Explaining my motivations never seemed to resonate.
With recent user data privacy scandals and online censorship making headlines, attitudes seem to be shifting a bit. But not much.
As the correlations between mental health and social media usage become clearer, the research findings reveal more direct causation. However, I am still met with frequent confusion because I keep my thoughts, whereabouts, and creations off digital platforms.
I assumed revelations regarding government spying and corporate disregard for consumer privacy would be convincing enough to create a mass exodus from the voluntary toxicity.
I was wrong.
There seems to be a lack of foresight or willpower to disengage, allowing this hyper-connectivity to poison the public into feeling less a user and more like it is being used.
We are humans first, not data. Likes and follows do not define us.
A real connection enriches your life, rather than distracts you from it or makes you feel less than.
Today's youth seem least equipped to deal with this new reality. I wonder what is in store for an entire generation that does not understand its sense of self-image, self-worth, and self-responsibility without checking in with the little mirror of feedback between its fingers.
If I could see the digital profile that technology companies have of me, I wonder if I would recognize myself within it visage.
Would I be less clear to them - an unfinished, patchy portrait of my consumer self, compared to others who share more? Have any of my efforts significantly limited my exposure to these socially and emotionally invasive services?
In this new world, deplatforming, terms of service violations, and censorship are colliding with concerns over free speech, privacy, and cognitive autonomy. These dichotomies converge into a convoluted mess of digital static. They cloud our understanding of our self-worth, self- identity, and a clear path to navigate out of the fog.
We are losing ourselves in a sea of connectivity that we have yet to learn to recognize or resist. It is not too late to jump ship and make for clearer waters.
If this reorientation needs a navigator, then I will gladly get started on drawing a map.
Maybe it is time we log off and reconnect.