[Length: around 950 words. Content: probably pointless and redundant musings about social media and technology, as if I wasn't a software engineer that should blindly eat these things right up]
When I reflect upon the modern world, and my place in it, the impacts of social media and technology are clear. I am, of course, employed as a software engineer. Most of my friends and acquaintances are IT workers in some capacity. Many of the people I know are huge techies; interested in the latest phone and apps; true early adopters. Even well outside of this circle of early adopters, Facebook has over 1 billion monthly active users, and billions of people worldwide have a smartphone.
Technology has this reach into all of our lives, and meanwhile we debate whether internet addiction is a real diagnosable condition. Respectable publications include musings about whether healthcare providers should analyze social media usage to look for indicators of depresion.
Everyone has to decide for themselves what their relationship to these technologies is; simply pretending these tools don't exist, or will go away, is magical thinking. Since I recently deactivated my Facebook account - partly as a formality, since I rarely used it, and partly as an experiment, to see if it would affect how I interact with the world - I wanted to share my personal experience.
Why Deactivate?
For people that have known me for a while, it might not be terribly surprising to learn that I deactivated my account. It's true - I've never been a heavy user of any social media.
But even with that caveat, I often had much the same negative experience as others when going onto Facebook. Perhaps I go on, and lo, there's content I care about! A friend from college is having a baby, or is getting married, or is sharing something meaningful that draws me into their world for just a few moments.
More often, though, I did not have this positive experience. More often, I would go on and compulsively refresh the news feed a few times. More often, I would go on and see an endless stream of the same rehashed content from various acquaintances. More often, I would go on and become annoyed by the advertisements I see. More often, I would check my notifications only to realize that there was nothing important going on. More often, it was simply a waste of my time, time that I could've spent doing something productive - contributing to open source, or reading, or working on my site, or volunteering, or any number of other things.
So I decided to experiment. I decided to cut FB out of my life completely. Would I lose anything of value?
What Then?
The simple answer is this: no, I did not lose anything of significant value to me. On the most important qualitative metric to me - how engaged with life am I? how much action am I taking on my own or others' behalf? - well, life is good. Before deactivation, FB was one source of distraction that would occasionally have the pull to take me away from action; now, this hasn't been possible. This post itself is one piece of evidence that I now act more regularly - these are my words, my expression of self, my experimental results - and one that I am just a little proud of.
Perhaps much of this could've happened if I tried sharing all my tiny success and struggles with my network on FB. I'm skeptical; again, while internet addiction is not officially in the DSM, the fact that this is even being raised as a question makes the usage of social media and many web-based tools a decision which demands our scrutiny, not our lazy acceptance.
What Now?
I am certainly not alone in trying out an experiment like cutting out social media. I will certainly not be the last.
That said, I do expect to re-establish some presence on social media again. While some past friends might find this surprising, I legitimately enjoy social situations now, I legitimately enjoy making the effort to express myself in a variety of contexts. Social media is a potentially valuable tool, a potentially valuable context in which to express myself and engage with a variety of ideas I wouldn't otherwise encounter in my daily life. Engaging my curiousity is absolutely one of my guiding principles, one of my north stars in navigating life. Reading books with depth has long been one of my tools for engaging this, and I expect that I'll try, time and time again, to use social media to the same end.
When I re-establish this presence, my footprint will definitely be light. I will prefer publishing content to consuming content - and, ideally, publish content that isn't completely useless. I will limit the number of influencers and major players that I subscribe to. I will keep discipline in mind, and attempt to structure my usage so that I don't end up naively refreshing for the next hit of dopamine.
When I re-establish this presence, I will engage social media with that in mind, I'll enter this "publish-heavy mode".
Reflections for You
So the above are my considerations; my plans for engaging technology now and in the future. Personally, I'd love to hear your experience in managing the technologies and social media tools in your life. Or other experiments one could try out - I've cut out any contract with an ISP before, opting to only hotspot off of my phone. Perhaps you might benefit from tips that The Guardian has published, or The Telegraph, or perhaps you like outsourcing your tips to Quora.
Either way, know that this is a global phenomenon, and know that it's worth doing some real introspection and reflection on what your relationship to the technology of the modern world should be.