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Have you noticed lately just how “corporate” everything seems on social media? Every post you look at is just another ad for someone to make money from, and if your opinion doesn’t match up with the common narrative then so long, you just got canceled. Maybe it’s my age or maybe it’s the disgust I feel whenever I see any targeted advertising, but every site I browse now doesn’t feel fun anymore. I remember back in my childhood when going on the internet was fun and mysterious. You never knew what to expect when you started surfing the web. Blogs back then were actually enjoyable to read and websites that gave you information did it for the sake of giving you information. Now when I go on the internet I know exactly what to expect, twitter is full of people yelling the most irrational arguments at each, Facebook is full of aunt sally sharing articles that are just obviously fake but we don’t have the attention span to read anything more than the headline. Youtube is just people ripping off each others content to shove sponsors and ads down your throat so they can “get rich quick” and TikTok, well I’ve always hated TikTok since I have ADHD and I don’t want to ruin my attention span further.

Reddit used to be cool but ever since “clout” became a thing, everyone only posts what ever will get them the most clout. Then there’s also the algorithms which are designed to make us stay as addicted to our screens as possible to big tech can get rich off of your monkey brain. These algorithms find the most emotion-provoking content that hooks on to your attention like a predator catching it’s prey. Look at what that did to world. Large swaths of the population believe in “real science” that’s actually just a load of bullshit when you fact check it, but since we trained our attention spans to be so short we don’t even care to verify even the most outrageous claims. The internet was supposed to make us all smarter, not stupid. Maybe I’m just going crazy but when I hear stuff like “The vaccine makes you magnetic according to the boogeyman!!11!1!” I can’t help but laugh in their faces and walk away while facepalming because of how wrong those statements are.

It’s not just making us stupid either, have you noticed how isolated and lonely you’ve felt since we were all forced to work from home? And don’t say “no, because I talk to my friends over the phone/discord/video call” etc, I want you to really think about it. Disregarding the lockdowns of the past 2 years, and keeping the time before the pandemic in mind, when was the last time you and some friend(s) were together and actually talked. Not small talk or watching Netflix together, and not looking at your phones either, I mean pure straight up conversation. Feels like forever doesn’t it? That’s another thing I noticed about today. No one actually looks you in the eyes when you talk to each other anymore. We’re always checking our emails, scrolling on twitter, watching the latest TikTok trend etc. I don’t really like that to be honest, because well, are people even paying attention to what we’re all saying anymore?

Let’s not forget about our mental health too. All this doom-scrolling just makes me feel bad, and it just feels like we’re screwed when you see all the headlines. How are you supposed to enjoy your own life when things completely out of your control are forcibly fed to you directly from your phone and just always make you miserable? Reddit is horrendous for this. Since the site gets content to the front page from the amount of upvotes it gets, all the bad news get upvoted and immediately shown to us the moment we open the app/site. All the headlines too are shortened down to a small sentence that will stimulate all those negative emotions in a very efficient manner.

I’m being hypocritical of this though, as in this article that you’re reading right now, I’m being a doom-sayer about social media. Look, the internet is an amazing tool and social media has connected us all in magical ways and I don’t want to downplay that achievement. I still find it mind-blowing that Facebook knows me so well that they can recommend me to add a friend whom I’ve lost contact with for years and finally re-connect. I mean, it’s extremely privacy invading and creepy and I don’t like that, but for other people it’s still a miracle to them. To each their own honestly.

So what am I suggesting you do then about this? Well I can tell you all about how I deleted all my social media profiles, all social media apps, switched to RSS feeds for getting my news updates rather than depending on reddit etc, which honestly works pretty well for me. But for others, this may not be such an easy thing to do. Social media platforms are engrained in our society and the internet is an essential function of basically everything nowadays, and we’ve become so accustomed to this way of communicating that cutting it off is such a radical and cold turkey approach to the problem. Maybe this is all not a problem for you, and in that case I’m happy for you, teach me your ways(seriously). But for others and myself included, social media is basically a part of our lives and we can’t just dump it immediately.

Since I don’t have Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/Twitter etc anymore I can’t keep up with some of my friends and family, and can’t even communicate to them without their phone number in some cases. This was a tradeoff I was willing to make not just for my mental health and sanity, but also my privacy as well. But for others this trade-off can mean the difference between losing relationships and other opportunities. So what do you do in this dilemma? Well honestly, start small. Use social media less, rely on your phone less, pick up new hobbies like reading or learning to play an instrument instead of mindlessly scrolling on TikTok. Phones nowadays how screen time control features like with Apple’s aptly named “Screentime” feature buried in iOS’s settings. Use that to block the apps when you’ve used them for a certain amount of time during the day. The more you realize just how negative social media can be, the better. So go on, call up your friend for a drink, put down your phone, and listen to what they have to say. Because maybe listening to one another properly will make us feel less crappy and make us all appreciate the little things more.