Social Media Is the New Smoking

I quit smoking over a decade ago, but only because I had a S60 phone with an IRC client lol

In many situations I am on my phone so that I don't need to talk to anyone. I'm in the social circumstance for some other reason beyond my control.

Addictions aren't necessarily bad. Some need drugs to help get by. Others junk food. TV shows. Validation. I indulge in a number of things when I just want my brain to turn off. I let my desires run on autopilot and give myself what I need.

Sometimes, these can reveal important things about our personalities. One of my addictions is particular kinds of information. Complex and novel ideas, long-form essays, "insight porn." The type of things I gravitate towards reading tells a lot about me and what I find interesting in this world. I'd like to make some kind of dent in the universe in these spaces I find interesting before I die. Sure it might suck when I end up reading too much at the expense of something else, but what can I say, that's what I enjoy.

For those whose lives revolve around social media like Facebook or Instagram, their attention might be largely allocated towards validation, a sense of belonging, identity. Things that are not necessarily new to a post-Facebook world. In an alternative universe, maybe they're doing some other kind of social climbing or image-crafting. I'd never hold that against somebody if that's what they're wired towards. I say, own it and use it as an asset in your life.

An addiction is a habit, and a habit is merely a stable pattern of human behavior. All of our non-novel behaviors are habits. The things our mind gravitates towards are habits. I think it crosses into a "negative addiction" once a habit starts to become detrimental to something we want out of our lives. That's when we should be concerned.

We are flawed, suboptimal creatures. It's ok to give into our addictions, good and bad. We should incorporate addictions as constraints in our models of living, working, interacting. We'll always have them. In my experience, trying to get rid of certain habits hurt me because they served a function to my well-being or personality.

You need to understand your own addictions. If a sense of belonging is important to your personality, you will feel a void in your life without it. There's a reason why poor men in third world countries might partake in cockfighting culture with other men rather than spend it on food.

That being said, I don't think the negatives of social media are all that bad. I would argue that grade school is way more toxic than social media. Social media usually makes a convenient target for those in the "good old days before technology," "humans need authentic human connection" camp.

I am willing to extend a platform+API metaphor and grant that social media (the platform) allows us to build an external layer of ourselves (the API) that becomes the means with which others interact with us while while we hide our internals, but you'll have to convince me that that's mostly a bad thing. I don't think appealing to an "authentic human connection" value works. Sounds like a win for technology if you ask me!

Here's the thing. Social media is still a choice. Contrast this to the toxic and unnatural environment that is high school, which is forced upon us.

Social media feeds our insecurities? Well, high school created them in the first place.

Technology almost always affords you the freedom to engage or disengage. Take online dating for example. In the "good old days," men would have to impress and court a whole family just to date one person -- you're essentially dating a whole family. Now you can just find someone online within minutes, and start connecting with the one person you actually want to. Is some dude harassing you online? You're free to block him with the click of a button or just turn off the app. Sure there are tradeoffs, but the key here is choice.

Think freedom to respond to a text whenever you want vs being "on-call" all the time.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you are hanging out with people who are constantly on their phones, then the truth is, they are making a personal choice to disengage from that situation, and they value more whatever's going on in the "real internet world" rather than the "tiny bubble" that is the room you guys are sitting in. Maybe the latest meme or what's happening in North Korea is more interesting. The actual problem is a mismatch between you and your company. Technology simply affords them choices in dealing with social expectations they might not actually want.

Facebook is not the end game, and technology can do better. But I think pointing fingers at social media for ruining us all is a bit silly.

The negativity around the US election was the catalyst for me to stop browsing Facebook. I'd wake up in the morning, scroll through my feed and my stress would hit the ceiling. It was a shitty way to start each day. When I sat back and thought about it critically, I also realized how much I enjoyed getting likes on things I posted, and I felt uncomfortable with that. It's one thing to enjoy it a bit, but I was spending large amounts of time thinking about a witty message or a perfect photo just for the sake of getting lots of likes. That was enough to prompt me to remove the app from my phone, and I haven't missed it at all.

Now being "off the drug", I am more aware of others' usage and feel uneasy about it. Watching my wife mindlessly pop open the app and scroll through her feed, sometimes exiting conversations midway through makes me realize that I had been doing the same things for years. I've also noticed that I have less desire to take pictures, and I'm not concerned with them being perfect - I only want enough to document my life for my own memories, not to garner likes or to craft my public image.

Having to go on Facebook occasionally (like responding to an event invite), I still feel the siren's call to just scroll through the feed a little. But I know that reading one post won't be enough, so I'll keep scrolling and scrolling...so I try to avoid even letting my gaze fall on it.

I think the idea is cool, but I have a feeling there would be quite a legal battle that ensues when someone is injured or dies in the hostel after they couldn't connect to 911.