Removing Social From Social Media
These tweets got me thinking about my social media usage, the negative impact it has on my life and how I fill up my fuel tank.
I’m guilty. I work alot, have a Family with three young kids, cook, do housework and spend/waste at least half an hour a day on YouTube watching game videos even though I haven’t had the time to play a computer game in years.
After a long day of work I often end up on the couch at 10 without much energy left for meaningful conversations. Let alone the time or energy to make friends at our new home we moved to a year ago.
During my commute and work day though I spend quite some time online sharing “social" experiences. I post read and clap on medium, binge instagram, upvote on stackoverflow, like and retweet, lurk linkedIn… and all the time I like, upvote and❤️ the shit out of other peoples stuff. Some are strangers, others are people I know, but all of those experiences are in the disconected way Daniel Cook describes so tellingly in those tweets. During the span of a day I had so many “social” micro-interactions that at the end of the day I feel satisfied and lack the urge to have real interactions. Sad, isn’t it?
This article I posted recently is a perfect example
When I published it here on medium I was so proud. I wrote it in about two hours from start to finish — which is pretty quick for me. But it took me years of experience to be able to write it in the first place. It combines some hard learned lessons with common design sense and I feel, it should be helpful to others.
But it only got how many— 15 likes on LinkedIn and 2 retweets? Come one, this clearly should have done better 😒. I should be happy because I posted an article I like, but instead i feel down because it could have “done better.”
Better at what? Seriously, better at what? I got 15 likes and 2 people found it good enough to tell somebody else about it. In our online-life quantity goes over quality and this breaks the whole experience. If those would have been real interactions and even just one person would tell me they found my work to be helpful, I would have been happy. And if two people let me know that they just shared my check list with a collegue I would crack a beer because I could help out two fellow designers!
Me, gauging the worth of my work off of likes and claps is so hollow. It’s as if I peed in my cars gas tank and expected it to run. It’s full, but it’s empty.
I was so proud when posted said article online, but now I feel ambivalent because I had hoped to get more likes because I tell myself social reach is important as a freelancer. And maybe because it boosts my self esteem — nah, maybe others, but not me ;)
I love to create stuff. It’s why being an Interaction Designer is the best job I’ve ever had. But online it’s complicated — instead of beeing proud of my work I count those “social” confirmations I don’t get and rely on unsatisfying micro interactions to fuel me. Thats not how it should be.
Technology to the rescue
To change this, I created a browser plugin that will remove all social features from my most used platforms. I’ve added medium, since this is where it dawned on me and it’s pretty simple compared to other pages I use:
- filter out all notifications except comments (because I want to be polite and answer those)
- remove the clap counters on my own articles so I don’t know how many people clapped for me
- hides all links to stats
- hides all my personal stats from my profile page
If you wish to unsocial and refocus on creating medium content, you can get the extension for chrome and firefox in their respective add-on store.
It’s open source
Want to unsocial your frequently used sites?
The browser extension is open source.
The app is built modularly and it’s dead simple to add new pages to it. Fork the repo, create a feature branch and send me a pull request. I’m happy to add your most used site to the plugin.
Is this all?
Additionally, I removed instagram, youtube, linkedin, twitter and medium from the home screen of my phone and turned off all notifications except for comments, where I still want to answer. This way, I’m still able to create and share the stuff I like, but I’m not constantly tempted to waste time everytime I look at my phone.
Will it help me?
We’ll see what happens. My hope is, that through the lack of those unsocial micro interactions, my longing for real interactions starts to come back and I start to spend more time and energy on important relationships. If you read this article in some time from now, feel free to ask me how and if things have changed. I still read comments and messages — but no need to clap because
I’m now filling up my gas tank with good fuel. 😉
Have a nice day/evening/weekend, until next time
Tim
On a side note: If you’re new to UX or would like to learn more about the topic, check out my first ever online tutorial:
