How To Quit Social Media and Start Consuming Better Content
My efforts to better myself and get out of the “infinity pools”
I don’t mean quit social media, like delete the apps, delete your accounts, and never look back — unless you want to do that, in which case, I’d recommend trying. I mean quitting social media in the sense of quitting it as the thing that is used, practiced, and peddled today.
The message here is not quitting just because the internet isn’t perfect or always the most helpful thing. It’s about being a more mindful and conscientious consumer.
At the beginning of the year, I went all of January largely without social media. I didn’t have TikTok, didn’t have Facebook except for occasional checks on my laptop that were life-giving and efficient, and I didn’t use Instagram except to make a post about a trip I went on.
“The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking.”
― Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
It’s easy to take cleanses like that on with the mindset of “screw social media” — especially if you’ve spent any time reading books like Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, the book I quoted above. But as any good addict knows, that’s not a way to quit something. Because there’s a reason we’re drawn to our drug of choice in the first place.
Media is not our enemy. We are.
I’m actually glad I gave myself a few times to access social media because those few occasions showed me how much I wasn’t missing. I was able to take a step back and realize how silly what I was doing was. Meaningful in some ways, but ultimately silly and unnecessarily time-consuming.
As my boyfriend frequently reminds me, it’s so much better to just have a person right in front of you.
Social media should be used primarily, as it was kind of originally intended, to connect with the people you don’t see all of the time. This is why Facebook is still so popular with the slightly older crowd, and why I use it myself. It allows us to connect with people not in our immediate sphere of influence, people living states away or down the road who attend a different church or work somewhere different.
“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet just because there’s a picture with a quote next to it.” — Abraham Lincoln (not really…cause, duh)
There are also several other benefits of using social media. For me, it brings me new knowledge, allows me to be influenced by people who are successful in their fields, provides me with good comedy and oftentimes wholesome entertainment, and allows me to get away from the stress of my life sometimes.
Around the time the pandemic started, I got a TikTok. Like any self-respecting high school girl, I enjoyed the trends, tried making a few videos myself, and watched, and watched, and watched videos for hours on end.
This is where my social media use got out of hand. That was just the beginning of the pipeline, the gateway drug, if you will, to caring about Instagram likes and comments, trying to get more followers, and feeling like I needed to follow every whim and trend of the Internet when it came to social media and “being connected”.
In their book, Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day, authors Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky write about what they call “infinity pools” — or the apps that we use that just provide us content forever. Technically YouTube, Pinterest, and other similar apps fall under this category too, but we’ll give some special allowances in a second.
Ask yourself, what am I really looking for?
There’s a reason our culture is so obsessed with and addicted to social media. It’s legitimately fueling a need for us. We want connection, information, and inspiration, and we’ve tasted the Kool-Aid and can’t get away from the infinity pools hiding in plain sight on our devices.
“My riches consist, not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.” — Joseph Brotherton
But the same thing could happen if you started fueling those needs elsewhere. If you started pursuing other fulfilling activities and media, you could become obsessed with them too, with much better fruit as a result, I might add.
Recently, I realized that I was going to Instagram a lot for bite-sized nuggets of information that could be much better gained through watching longer-form content. John Fish, a YouTuber and Harvard graduate who posts videos about his college and young-adult experience talks about this in one of his videos.
“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” — Socrates
He shares how when someone writes a book, they’ve spent years, or maybe their whole life, discovering the content and developing the insights that they’re writing about. Conversely, someone posting on Instagram probably created that graphic in under 5 minutes on Canva. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable or can’t be useful, but there’s obviously a big difference in depth there that might be worth paying attention to.
Look for experts who can actually answer your questions and grow your view on life. Because there’s free content from them *everywhere.*
Since realizing my deeper need for information, insight, and guidance, I’ve been able to find much better answers to my questions and scratches for my itches by watching YouTube videos created by people who really know what they’re talking about. I’m also reading more books full of wisdom, expertise, and insight, and listening to podcasts and lectures where someone has really spent a lot of time studying up on what they’re talking about.
Instead of reading second-hand Biblical commentary on the Instagram of someone who has never seriously studied the academic side of theology, I can go watch lecture after lecture and get my questions answered by the experts in their field. Instead of just reading a Jordan Peterson quote, I can go listen to an entire lecture, speech, or interview from him.
And instead of reading a summarized lesson from a therapist trying to grow their business (which is totally fine, I’m not demonizing that) I can actually go spend time studying therapeutic practice or paying money to see my own therapist and pick her brain and expertise about things.
You deserve real, quality information. But you have to remember that it’s out there and invest the time to find it in order to most benefit from its addition to your daily life.
How can I leverage this moment to make this a better person?
This is a question I’ve started asking myself more and more — and it’s changing my life.
Those YouTube videos and podcasts I’m talking about? Those books I’m reading? I didn’t know that they existed until I started looking for them. I also didn’t realize how well I could curate my social media to provide me with insight and entertainment while staying away from propaganda and cheap dopamine hits that were turning me into a zombie.
When I log on to TikTok, I try and only watch a few recommended videos and spend most of my time on the Following side — watching videos from people I trust and enjoy, whose information and content bless my life.
“You only waste time if you’re not intentional about how you spend it.”― Jake Knapp, Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day
I also watch YouTube videos about minimalism, philosophy, and theology, and deep thinkers who have thoughts to share that expand my worldview and my appreciation of the beauty of my world.
Since making a few intentional shifts in how I consume media, I’ve become a happier and arguably healthier person as a result. I’m also so much more intelligent, informed about the deeper ways of the world, and someone I would enjoy spending time around because of my better comprehension of life itself.
As I said earlier, media is not the enemy. It’s ourselves.
You are in charge of you.
As a result, you can decide how you engage with the online world and have both the privilege and the responsibility of curating your online presence and social media channels to best benefit you and the life you want to have.
I have realized that some “infinity pools” are worth having and bring me joy and good information, as well as connection. I use YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram on just about a daily basis, but I don’t let them take over my life — and I use them as a conscientious consumer who knows what she’s looking for and has set up those apps in a way that mimics those desires and intentions.
Those boundaries can and should be put in place if you’re going to have any online presence at all — which most of us need nowadays for various reasons. Social media has been the source of so much good in my life — even more so since I’ve learned to use it as a tool, not a toy, and mindfully consume all the good out there and ignore the bad to live my best life and live it to the fullest.
