I recently read Cal Newport’s book, Digital Minimalism, and this (and roughly a million other factors) have pointed me in the direction of making January a time for a social media detox.

I’m making up my own rules for this, but here’s what this means so far:

• No Facebook, including messenger.
• No Instagram
• Uninstalling Instagram and Facebook from my phone
• Blogging (and reading other peoples’ blogs) is OK
• Apps that offer a social component are OK, as long as the app’s primary purpose isn’t social (eg: Spotify, Goodreads, Fitbit, etc.)
• Phone calls and texting are definitely OK (and good), but conversations should get directed to phone calls, as opposed to spending half an evening texting someone I could just pick up the phone and call.

But why? Mostly because I’m no longer sure that the benefits of social media are outweighing the costs. I’m hoping that a detox will force me to get more creative in finding solutions to replace the benefits of social media (keeping up with friends, knowing about events) while allowing me to get rid of the bad parts. Some of the detailed reasons below are my own, some are a mash-up of my ideas with Newport’s, and some are Newport’s better-worded arguments for feelings that I already has swirled around but couldn’t quite name.

We Handed our Time to Silicon Valley.

Social media came into my life as a delightful distraction, a shiny new toy. I let it into my life without thinking about what role I wanted it to play and how much power and time I wanted to give it. The problem with letting these apps in without building firewalls around them first is that millions of dollars have been spent to make these apps as addictive as possible. It’s like I just woke up one day, living in a world where not participating in social media meant having some weird fear of people forgetting I existed. A world where disappearing for a few days meant someone somewhere thinking “what’s HER problem?” because I didn’t click a like button on something. (Obviously, no one really does this, but the nagging voice of anxiety tells me that they do.) I believe it is time to unplug these apps and only let them back into my life once I have built a fence around them, only letting them be used for purposes that I have thought about and chosen. Time is arguably my most precious resource, and I am really questioning whether a bunch of apps are worth my time. I don’t even spend that much time on them, but it’s all too easy to have a strange evening here and there where I get sucked into an internet k-hole, burning an entire evening doing absolutely nothing.

Hiding Things Only Helps so Much.

In an attempt to make social media feel less like a fire hose of endless chatter, I have tried hiding people I don’t know in real life, leaving a bunch of groups, etc. That has helped, but each pointless group I leave and each person I barely know that I hide just gets replaced by ads. Ads for exercise products. Ads for cheaply-made clothing from China. Ads for diet products that keep showing up no matter how many times I report them. The only way to stop that is to not participate at all. These apps do not exist to connect us. These apps exist to sell us things…

Polarization: Not Just for Sunglasses Anymore.

…and selling us things may be the least harmful thing they’re designed to do. A Facebook study that invited people to “check in” after they voted caused Facebook to realize that social media could influence elections. Do I think Facebook is to blame for the election of Trump? No, I do not. Do I think Facebook helped polarize people and create an environment where Russian bots and political troll accounts could swing the tone of conversations? Absolutely.

Everything All the Time.

Over the last year or so, I’ve had this feeling of “everything all the time.” All of life seems inundated by o much noise: emails, meetings, team chats, instant messages, news feeds, phone notifications, open office spaces. It is a life of constant distraction, constant interruption, and it is stressing me out to the point where I get to a weekend and just want to sit. I have to force myself to make time to see friends, not because I have magically stopped liking my friends, but because I feel like I have already had entirely too much social interaction in a week.

I have spent the last year asking friends (and three different therapists) how to manage this, and no one seems to have a solution. Even the therapists essentially just responded with “I know, right??” when I mentioned feeling overwhelmed all the time.

Hot Take: Phones Still make Calls.

I have also spent the last year wondering what happened to my social connections. All the same people are here, we just don’t feel as connected as we used to be. A huge part of this is that we are all in a stage of life that entails working a lot, taking care of small kids, and generally just not having as much time to hang out, have a cup of coffee, and chat. A lot of this is understandable and unavoidable, but it’s all too easy to convince ourselves that hitting a like button or commenting “so cute!” on a picture of someone’s kid is the same as talking to that person on the phone for 15 minutes. It is not. I think it’s time to start calling people on the phone again, and I’m hoping that taking away the crutch of the “like” button will help. I know, I know. I hate the phone, too. But you know what I hate more? Feeling like I never talk to my friends.

Maybe a lot of people stopped using the phone because it’s impossible to know whether it’s a good time to call someone or whether you would be interrupting. So why not text someone and ask when would be a good time to catch up for 15-30 minutes? Or maybe we just call but we start by asking if it’s a good time, and we all have an understanding that we will not have hurt feels if someone is like “let me call you back in an hour” or if someone just doesn’t pick up the phone. If you know you’re sitting in traffic every weekday at 5:00, why not let it be common knowledge that 5:00 is good time to call you? With a little creativity, I think we can make phone calls work.

That last reason was the one that pushed me over the edge. I realized that, over and over, I was keeping in touch with people by hitting a “like” button. And after all that time of checking feeds and scrolling and scrolling, I realized that the return on investment sucked. I was actually connected worse than if I had just picked up the phone.

Also Trolls and Nazis.

Social media has had numerous opportunities to take a stand with doxxers, Nazis, GamerGaters, and the like and social media has opted out. Social media is not in the business of caring about moderating hate speech. Social media is in the business of making money, and I think we’ve all been around long enough to realize that we are what social media is selling. I feel complicit in this by still participating, and it is grossing me out.

“But Amy, social media does good things, too!”

Yeah, I know. There are tons of people who have voices now that didn’t have voices before. Trans folks. People of color. Body positivity folks, the list goes on and on. I was staying on social media for those people, too, so I could hear the voices of people I don’t know in real life. But you know what? I could easily keep those voices around by subscribing to a few email lists or podcasts or reading a few select blogs each week. I can be exposed to voices from people outside my circle without continuing to hand my life over to the nasty tentacles of Facebook and Twitter.

So there we are. Those are my big reasons. And I’m not saying I’m leaving forever or anything. I’m saying I’m trying a thing. I’m leaving the apps to force myself to find other ways to keep the good parts and get rid of the bad parts. I leaving the apps to see if it helps with the fire hose of distraction.

Maybe eventually you’ll come along?