From Send Friend Request to Delete Account: A Social Media Reckoning
A master class in having the least class, brought to us by Zuck and Musk.
My name’s David, and I’m a social media asshole.
Or at least I used to be.
One of the biggest mistakes I made in my adult life was clicking on a button that read “Send Friend Request” on Facebook. It happened for the first time in 2006. It was considered “innovation,” and marketed exclusively for people in and just out of college (I was nearly three years beyond graduation when Facebook became available to non-students).
At 26, I was hitting my stride as a young professional. I was hitting high notes that year — promoted in the newsroom as an assistant metro editor, wrote my first Sunday enterprise story from reporting on volunteers in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, and the Bush years were making even more headlines as the administration was starting to spiral (Example: Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face! What a day to be in journalism!).
Everything was looking up, so how could it not be made even better by digitally connecting with old friends and acquaintances from high school and college who I absolutely never expected to see again for the remainder of my life? I didn’t bother to answer that question. That’s probably how I ended up wasting a lot of time and energy on social media.
Facebook opened the door to curating whatever version of yourself you wanted to project. Still sore about the boy or girl who dumped you right before prom? Get a few photos on your profile of your most attractive adult self with your latest romantic partner to show you’re doing just fine. Love your cat or dog? Put a photo gallery together because you love them more than you love most humans.
Passionate about religion, guns, or politics? Announce it to the world and never let your friends forget it.
Oops.
The Innovation That Wasn't
Social media took away our ability to surprise each other. Facebook soon became the most handy venting outlet for users to complain about everything they felt was wrong with their lives — more often than not, the chief complaints surrounded the opinions of all those former classmates they added to their friend roster. Twitter soon followed — once considered a great resource for breaking news long before it became Elon Musk’s personal property. Instagram came along with a focus on photos only to become a constant reinforcement of the facades of wealth and influence by many of its users. TikTok amplified the facades and accelerated the spread of misinformation.
And when access to social media went from the home or office computer to the iPhones and Androids, everyone who wanted a megaphone for the internet had one.
And just like high school and college, not everyone is the valedictorian.
As the snowball of post-9/11 politics started to roll over many aspects of American culture, social media users started making declarations about which side of the aisle they stood — on public policy, elections, art, style, tech, fashion, etc. Seriously — we’ve had social media debates about the color of a damn dress.
It’s the often overblown discussion of politics where I found trouble as my journalism career and my ego proved to be a terrible mix for social media. Arguing became my sport — and provoking my friendly audience was my steroid. It would usually start from a status update of my own. A friend would disagree with me in a comment, then I would counter in a follow-up comment. It would volley back-and-forth until one of us confirmed that I was right. And anyone who strongly disagreed and opposed what I claimed to value could JUST FUCK OFF!
Career networking meant nothing to me until my need to be right killed whatever opportunities I might’ve had otherwise.
And that’s when we learned we could remove friends and block them from ever connecting with you again (Finally, innovation!).
It took three attempts for me to pull myself away from Facebook (finally off for good during the pandemic), two for Twitter (finally left in 2017), and one for Instagram (also during pandemic). I have a few platforms to market this Substack, and though that has surely been a tool for people who make a living through the internet, it comes with the personal risk of losing more time by scrolling just to check in with (as of writing this) my single-digit following.
The Soloist actively chooses what gives them purpose and adds value to their ability to live a thoroughly human experience. The Soloist need to prove anything to anyone. As Epictetus wrote, “Don't explain your philosophy, embody it.”
Some Real Costs of Digital Connection
I ultimately decided to take myself off social for several reasons:
I began hating myself. One of the first decisions I should have made after beating cancer was removing myself from social media. I was not in a mental health state to be concerning myself with what I or others posted on the internet. And frustration at the fact that it took me so long to understand that none of it matters, as Essentialism teaches.
I wrote more on Facebook than I wrote anywhere else. I didn’t become a writer to just be clever in microbites on the web, but there I was — still living on autopilot. At least the whole point of being on Substack is to write to one’s desire, judgment be damned.
I poisoned SO MANY relationships. A number of positive relationships I had with friends and even potential romantic partners went bust because of my behaviors and (terrible) choice words. This was true for both personal and professional relationships. Career networking meant nothing to me until my need to be right killed whatever opportunities I might’ve had otherwise.
In no way was my life improving thanks to social media. There’s no evidence that my presence on social media was adding anything positive to my day-to-day life. The amount of time I’ve wasted on social media is incalculable. And as we have and will discuss here, I will never get that time back. It’s been spent like money on junk food — nothing good ever came from the investment.
I don’t like what it’s doing to users — in fact, it’s abhorrent. As the author and researcher Jonathan Haidt has written, younger generations have seen a surge of anxiety and depression over years since the first release of smartphones and the launch of Instagram. And the tech industry that gave birth to and continues being enriched by user-generated content and data won’t trade their profits for the sake of public health.
As we witness the oncoming speeding train of Generative AI, and as I learn more on how to use it as a thought partner instead of a work replacement, I can’t help but wonder what sort of people we’ll become should it become part of our mainstream culture. And while I may have taken more control of my choices since removing myself from social media, I have to wonder if others will take more control of their own — or attempt to make AI do the work for them.
There are lessons to be learned from the damage of social media on our mental health that we must confront in this era of AI. But equally important, there are lessons to be remembered about how we apply this technology in how we participate in the same society.
This time, I have to do better. We have to do better — or the future won’t be one worth sharing, online or off.
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