Editor’s Note: If you have trouble focusing to read this article in its entirety, it may be an indicator to reconsider your relationship with social media.
Over the last few months, the whispers got louder and louder…
“Quit social media.”
Part of me was excited by the thought of letting it go, but another part wanted to cling to it like Golum clinging to the ring – “My precious.”
Although I started getting signs months ago, it took awhile for me to muster up the courage to quit social media.
Here are some of the excuses I said to myself:
- “I share things that help and inspire people.”
- “It’s a great way to promote my books and other projects.”
- “I’m connected with some amazing people.”
All of those are valid to some extent. But here’s the thing:
- I don’t need social media to help and inspire people
- I don’t need social media to promote my books and other projects
- I don’t need social media to stay connected with amazing people
In fact, social media is a poor substitute for all of those:
- My long-form writings, like books and articles, are far more effective for helping and inspiring people
- I can help and inspire people more powerfully in person
- The vast majority of my website traffic comes from search engines, not social media. So focusing more on writing articles makes more sense for creating awareness around my books and projects.
- With the people I resonate most with, meeting up with them in person or having a great conversion on the phone creates a much deeper relationship.
Weapons of Mass Distraction
At this point, we all know that social media…
- Fragments focus and attention
- Is addictive (by design and for profit)
- Hijacks your dopamine receptors and creates dopamine-driven feedback loops
- Reinforces instant gratification
- Creates more comparison with other people, which reduces self-confidence
- Exacerbates FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
- Creates unrealistic expectations about life (by seeing other people’s “highlight reels”)
- Is a form of entertainment, not a fundamental human or business need
- Distracts you from the life in front of you
- Destabilizes mental health (as a result of everything else listed above)
If you bring awareness to yourself, or observe other people, these effects are blatantly obvious.
We don’t know the long-term effects of social media, because it has only been around for less than 20 years. And access to social media via cell phones is even more recent.
So who knows the long-term effects of it? This is especially true of children who use it starting at a young age, while their brain is just starting to develop.
Remember that social media platforms are products. They’re owned by companies who need to generate profits, so they’re hyper-optimized to keep your attention and profit off of you. That’s a key point to keep in mind when observing the environment of social media.
I notice a shift in my state of being whenever I scroll on social media.
My focus instantly falls apart, I feel a creeping anxiety and the news feed sucks me in. A simple check of Facebook or Instagram can lead to a half hour of scrolling, going off on trivial tangents and feeling anxious and scatterbrained.
The litmus test I use to indicate how present I am during the day is how I eat my lunch.
I make a smoothie every day for lunch. On the days where I scroll more on social media, I drink it without enjoying it. I’m distracted, and I might even look at my phone or computer while drinking it. On the days where I don’t scroll, I peacefully enjoy every sip. I feel calm and appreciate the simple things. It’s a big difference.
Social media use creates a constant background hum of anxiety that has almost become the norm today. Contrast this to things like sitting on your porch and watching birds, or reading a physical book, which are incredibly peaceful and restorative.
Focus & Attention Spans
The assault of stimuli, tidal waves of trivial information, instant gratification and dopamine addiction have absolutely decimated most people’s attention spans.
Like I mentioned above, I notice it within myself. On days when I’m scrolling through social media a lot, my focus is non-existent. I have trouble concentrating. But on the days when I keep social media to a minimum, I have monk-like focus. I feel so peaceful, creative and free. It’s no surprise that’s when my best work gets done.
We’re seeing these effects with everyone, especially kids.
The kids I know don’t have the attention span to read books, watch a video longer than 5 minutes, or even use their imagination. They’re so conditioned to absorbing the hyper-fast-stimuli of social media that their attention spans are almost non-existent.
Combine this with the lack of exercise and the replacement of imagination with being force fed information and visuals via technology, and it’s a recipe for severely unstable mental health.
Platforms like Snapchat and Tik Tok condition people’s minds to consume content in tiny snippets (often 15 seconds or less). Even movies and tv shows are more fragmented now. They’ve become faster-paced, with quickly changing scenes and constant action, violence and sexuality. These are both causes and effects of diminishing attention spans.
When you’re conditioned like this, your ability to focus is severely compromised. And sustained focus is the foundation of deep learning and genius-level creativity.
Someone who has the focus for deep learning and master craftsmanship (in whatever form) is a human stepping into their full potential. On the other hand, what can you really learn or create when you’re unfocused and addicted to constant distraction?
In a world where most people are operating with fragmented attention, the ability to focus and do Deep Work is becoming increasingly rare and important.
Chasing The Unessential
The distraction of social media often puts me on a hamster wheel of chasing trivialities. It’s not just me either, this happens with everyone in different ways and to different degrees.
The more I’m on social media, the more rabbit holes I go down. If someone posts something that triggers me, I drain my energy thinking about it.
Social media is an endless loop of instant gratification. The instant gratification is usually very surface-level and, not the kinds of things you wish you did more of when you’re on your deathbed.
Sometimes I find myself sharing little thoughts every day. Now there’s nothing wrong with this, and they do help people, but it’s much more effective if I let those ideas evolve into something more coherent and potent, like an article or a book.
The Benefits Of Longer Form Creation
Focusing on longer form content, like articles or books, is more beneficial for many reasons…
I need to fully integrate the idea before expressing it. You can’t just whip out a great article in 5 minutes like you can do with a little Facebook rant. And a book requires at least a few months of processing and creation. This built-in mechanism ensures the highest quality content.
Then there’s the instant gratification. Social media is all about instant gratification. People won’t even see your post 2 days later. So that means everything needs to be optimized for getting attention. If you play into this, like I have sometimes, the appeal to attention dilutes the quality of what is shared.
External Validation
The instant feedback and likes of social media can become a trap of external validation.
If I share some profound wisdom and no one likes it, I start to question myself. If I post a picture of myself, with some profound wisdom, and more people like it, I might be tempted to post more pictures of myself.
This is the trap of doing things for the likes. I’ve caught myself so many times checking a post over and over to see who liked it and commented. That is not how great art, writing, movements or businesses are created. External validation is the trading of pure inspiration and service for ego-gratification.
The cycle of external validation becomes addictive. Whenever I get caught in it, I think, “Oh, I inspired people! What I write is actually good! Oh look, people are interested in my book. Maybe I’ll be a full-time author soon.” And there, all I’ve really done is sacrificed my soul’s creativity to the attachments of my ego.
For me, my intentions with social media are to inspire people and spread awareness around my books and projects. So the validation and addictive components mostly happen around that.
With other people, it might be different. They might want to be seen as attractive, so they fish for attention that way, and it becomes a cycle of external validation regarding their looks. At a fundamental level, it’s all addiction to external validation.
In my case as an author, it distracts me from putting out my highest quality work. This applies to everyone, because it distracts us from living our best life, whatever that may look like for you.
The Ideal Lifestyle
What would be the ideal lifestyle for me?
What would enable me to put out the highest quality work?
What habits would help me write things that have the biggest positive impact on people?
Those questions led me to the decision to quit social media, and I believe they’re crucial for everyone to ask themselves at this time.
My ideal lifestyle definitely does NOT include scrolling through social media for hours every day, or constantly putting out micro-content in order to catch people’s attention and possibly build a brand. Nope, not for me.
My ideal lifestyle consists of long mornings meditating and journaling, then creating timeless works of writing (or other projects) from a place of deep inspiration. The pace would be much slower and simpler than the world of social media, yet infinitely more enjoyable.
That kind of distraction-minimized lifestyle would allow me to create the highest quality work and have the biggest positive impact on people. I get into these zones periodically, but it’s time to make it a daily thing.
Being Non-Reactionary
Like any artist – or really anyone in general – my best work is non-reactionary. It’s not reactive, but straight from the heart and soul.
Social media, however, creates a reactionary state. And creating from a reactionary state, in most cases, dilutes the creativity. When you’re constantly reacting to current events, likes, or Facebook debates, what you create lacks that timeless quality of true masterpieces.
I’m maturing in many ways. A major expression of this is being non-reactionary, in both my emotional state and my creativity. I don’t want to write Facebook posts in response to someone whose opinion I view as “wrong” or put out content for likes. My intention is to create the highest quality work possible and inspire people.
The Lao Tzu Effect
I foresee a paradigm shift where lack of social media activity is a badge of honor. It means that your work is so high-quality, and your focus is such that you choose to not use social media. Yet your work still reaches people.
I call this “The Lao Tzu Effect.” Lao Tzu, the author of The Tao Te Ching, lived over 2,000 years ago. Obviously, he’s never been on social media. Yet people are always talking about The Tao Te Ching and Lao Tzu quotes are shared all over social media.
I’ve been seeing two distinct levels of “influencers.” There are people who share repackaged ideas on social media, and then there are people who innovate meta-ideas that other people share. The Lao Tzu effect is going so deep with your quality and innovation that other people share your work.
One example of someone doing this now is Charles Eisenstein, who only pops on social media to share his powerful essays every month or so. Another example is Cal Newport, who doesn’t use social media at all. Both are among the most important thought-leaders of our time. There are many other low-key geniuses who embrace similar lifestyles.
I’ve noticed a strong connection between “social media minimalism” and timeless, high-quality work. When you look at the effects of social media, this connection is obvious.
What I’m Quitting
The only social media platforms I use regularly are Facebook and Instagram, so those are what I’m mainly letting go of. I’m not going to delete my accounts, because there are some valuable gems there that I hope inspire more people. I am, however, logging out until further notice.
I won’t be using any other social media platforms either. The only “exception” would be uploading videos on YouTube.
I have a strong feeling that this will both increase the quality of my social interactions, as well as the quality of my creative output.
A cool experiment would be to look at the evolution of this blog from this point forward. And that leads me to the last point here.
Where To Find Me
In my post-social media world, I’ll be focusing on two main things on a week-to-week basis:
- This Blog (bookmark this site if you like it – Also go HERE to read my longer form essays)
- Intuitive Email Transmissions (based on the collective energy)
Blogging and email newsletters, in my opinion, have even greater reach than social media (because they’re platform independent), without the distraction-laden environment.
There’s also some books and other more long-term projects I’m working on, so if you’re connected via the places listed above you’ll hear about all of it.
So, this is goodbye…
Will I ever go back to social media? Who knows. From my perspective now though, it’s until further notice.
If you want to stay updated, check out my intuitive email transmissions here.
I intend to make the Email Transmissions the best conscious/spiritual newsletter on the internet, as well as my main form of online communication.
Cheers to a focused, creative, inspired life.
Much love everyOne!
~ Stephen Parato
PS – If this resonates with you, please share this article and consider your own social media detox experiment.
