Delete your accounts now
Medium is a social media platform that improves the quality of your life.
After deleting my social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube, I began to contemplate whether there were any appropriate platforms to share ideas without being subject to algorithms with inherent biases and ulterior motives.
It was the whole concept, of creating and consuming content for free that didn’t sit right with me. It was a simple way of seeing how addicted humans could become to small rectangular screens in their pockets.
The more I considered the intentions and actions of large companies like Meta and Alphabet, I began to appreciate the sheer depth of their actions. Whether it was intentional or unintentional is irrelevant at this point, as a young person I have observed social media especially those who profit of people’s addiction, distraction and depression are leading the slow degradation of human civilisation.
I still remember the days when individual’s lived without the consideration of the perception of thousands if not millions of people. When I first opened Facebook, I only cared about my personal network, their views, their preferences and how to be viewed as socially desirable among them.
As I got older, I began to realise that these feelings were better derived from internal satisfaction versus any form of external validation. Although, for young people of today, in their teens and 20s, there’s a constant comparison to the millions of people who substantiate and consolidate trends like specifically shaped bodies, lifestyle inflation and making noise.
There’s no desire on social media to change the narrative or the collective consciousness. The reason for this arises from how you keep people glued to their screens for hours on end.
Think about your favourite TV show or movie? It was entertaining and addictive because it gave you positive and negative feelings in relatively equal measure to ensure you remained fixated. It utilised attractive people and bewildering storylines to help create a fantasy that you would buy into.
Welcome to social media!
This is the same mechanism of action with a few additional steps such as placing people in hyper-segmented bubbles to ensure they never get conflicting viewpoints. Each person then ends up in a bubble of their own creation, their own reality where they believe their perspectives and views are that of the majority.
It’s scary right?
Walking around a world, where everybody thinks they’re right and virtuous.
During my deleting spree, I pondered upon Medium and its benefits. In a World where content is 3–15 seconds, I thought there was a beauty in communicating complex ideas and topics through the written word. It’s easy to manipulate people through short-form videos; you use an attractive woman in very little clothing and some controversial statements. This short recipe has led to some of the most viral and sensational Youtube and social media influencers of our generation.
Medium doesn’t have this recipe. It uses long-form memos as its main form of content. You can write to your heart’s content. It doesn’t mean people will read it but it gives you an opportunity to truly understand and appreciate the depth of your views.
Nonetheless, Medium is a great form of social media- as it allows you to communicate to your friends, family and strangers in a meaningful way. It doesn’t matter how many claps or comments you get. Instead, the meaning is derived from your ability to communicate and eloquently relay your thoughts to the platform.
Medium will improve your quality of life as it’s the only social media platform that forces you to understand and work on a skill over the long-term to be able to leverage it as an influencer. The barrier for entry to the medium partner programme is high- requiring 100 followers and regular blog posting. I don’t feel this is unwarranted, as this high barrier creates an essence of delayed gratification. This simple concept is revolutionary when it comes to an individual’s ability to succeed or thrive.
I sincerely believe the movement behind deleting social media accounts with organisations that earn their bottom line from wasting your precious attention is necessary. It’s a movement, we should all attempt to pursue even if it’s for a short-period of time. One must ask themselves, what are the true benefits of social media? Especially those platforms that don’t make you happy or improve your life.
Instead, I challenge you to post on Medium. It doesn’t need to be everyday. It just needs to be regular and consistent enough for you. I implore you to check the progress of your writing and upgrade your skills today.
