I created my first Facebook account in school. Most of my classmates used Facebook to talk to each other, and I didn't want to be left out. Back then, having an internet connection at home was a luxury reserved for the highly privileged, so I would accompany my dad to the cyber cafe once a week to log in and keep myself updated.
Things changed when the smartphone became something I needed to have. During my pre-university days, WhatsApp was picking up steam. It was convenient to share notes and questions and get updates directly from the teachers - an absolute game-changer!
My parents bought me a Nokia Lumia 630 - a sleek matte black smartphone running WindowsOS. I remember how excited (and frankly, overwhelmed) I was to see my classmates, their profile pictures and the 100+ messages on the class group.
There were these smileys (which I later learnt are called emojis) and moving images called GIFs! It felt as if I had entered another dimension altogether. Quickly, I downloaded multiple apps onto my new smartphone - Facebook being one of them.
Looking back, I believe this was the point of no return. I began spending a lot of time using my phone - texting, uploading pictures, and sending friend requests to old friends I had lost touch with. As my first year of pre-university concluded, we had a month off for the summer, and things went downhill. I had nothing to do, so I spent my whole day surfing the net, uploading redundant content, and talking to multiple people. It got to a point where my mum would lose her mind. I would spend almost half an hour in the washroom, despite my legs going completely numb, because I was that hooked on social media and had no control over myself.
Clearly, the phone controlled me.
Despite this, life was, for the most part, the same. Soon, I began obsessing over numbers.
How many likes did my photo get? Did someone comment on it? Don't I look good enough?
Ah, maybe people just haven't seen the photo yet. Let me refresh my feed.
Oh, I just heard a notification. Has someone commented?
Cal Newport, currently working as a professor at Caltech, in his path-breaking book "Digital Minimalism", compares social media to a slot machine. In the hope of a huge reward, a person pulls the slot machine and eagerly awaits the outcome. If they hit the jackpot, bingo! Otherwise, the person continues pulling the slot machine in the hope that they might hit the jackpot. But there's more to this than meets the eye.
If the reward is predictable, then this hope dissipates. The excitement fades. However, if the reward pattern is unpredictable, the excitement increases. This is one of the fundamental ideologies on which social media is tuned. The content is served in a manner that keeps the user hooked, refreshing constantly to find content that interests them (similar to the reward of a slot machine). The sheer amount of money social media companies spend to optimise their platforms is mind-boggling. Every aspect of a social media application has been meticulously designed for retention - right down to the red shade of a new notification.
Things got so out of hand that I would be disappointed if the notification didn't validate me. Messages from my close friends, girlfriends, and even my family would hardly pique my emotions, but one that said: "So and so liked your photo"? I would be on cloud nine.
A study revealed that 37.4% of people rated their phone as more or equally important as their close friends, of which 29.4% said their smartphone was equally or more important than their parents (source included).
Imagine prioritising a device over your parents - the world truly is a sad place.
Have you ever wondered how social media companies make money?
Their applications are free for everyone, right? But every single social media company is swimming in pools of cash. How?
This is just common knowledge now, but if something is for free, then you are the product! . Social media giants sell your data to companies to serve you advertisements. The more data they have of you, the better the ads that can be served, and the higher the chance of you buying the product shown. The data that can be collected depends on the usage of the person. The more a person uses a service, the more the information is collected.
Bingo!
With this data, curated content mixed with advertisements can be served to ensure that a user uses the platform for as long as possible, thereby making the company more money.
I believe that the most influential addition to Facebook was the "like" feature. The "like" feature was introduced almost 6 years after the introduction of Facebook. It was marketed as a new way to interact with the pictures uploaded by friends, to show them how much you appreciate them. Over the years, new features, such as reactions, have been introduced.
Human interaction is intricate, with factors such as body language, diction, tonality, and emotion play a significant role in communication. Over the years, we have evolved to pick up on subtle changes in these factors to judge what the other person wants to communicate.
Now imagine condensing all of these factors to just text and emojis.
How many times have you had a misunderstanding over text? Once? Twice?
It's most likely a lot more than that.
This is because it is nigh impossible to pick up cues to comprehend what the other person wants to convey!
Facebook was slowly losing steam, and people craved for change. In 2016, I was introduced to this new application, where a person can only upload photos and message people, an application that was generating ripples across the Internet, Instagram. My friends spoke so highly of the filters and the refreshing user experience. I was quick to make an account and send a ton of follow requests to my friends. As of 2023, Instagram is THE social media application, with over 2.35 billion users worldwide, and is touted to reach 2.5 billion users by the end of 2023.
Instagram replaced Facebook for the most part, with millennials primarily using Instagram for communication, sending memes, and posting photos. People post the best moments of their lives on Instagram, and I was no exception. Even up to a few months ago, I would post multiple stories (photos that stay up for 24 hours on a person's profile and are shoved down the throats of their followers) to show my followers that I was having fun, even if in reality, I actually wasn't.
I edited photos to ensure they looked appealing, even if the end product strayed far away from reality, so people would validate me with likes, comments, and messages. I would spend hours thinking of the perfect caption and time to upload a photo. At my worst, I used to spend an average of 90 minutes a day on Instagram, which is substantially lower than the 151 minutes spent by an average person on social media (source included).
That was how strong of a vice-grip social media had on me.
Sure, many people might blame me for not having control over myself.
You should use the app more responsibly!
Instagram isn't forcing you to use the app. It's your choice!
It looks like you have nothing better to do!
These are some of the common rebuttals that have been hurled my way. The issue is that social media has been designed to be addictive.
As discussed earlier, the more time you spend on their applications, the more money they make from selling your data. Companies hire so-called "attention engineers" who optimise every aspect of the application to ensure the user spends a few extra seconds using it. However, let me also be accountable. Every person has their own trials and tribulations - a manifestation of trauma they have encountered. I loved having the spotlight on me, and social media satisfied this need.
This isn't even going into apps like TikTok, which is frankly an abomination. TikTok has singlehandedly reduced our attention span to a few seconds. TikTok is an infinite-scrolling platform, serving short-form content that typically ranges from a few seconds to a minute.
In his book "Deep Work", Cal Newport addresses how a short attention span makes it impossible to focus on a task for more than a few minutes. Delivering a performance of the highest calibre requires unwavering focus.
However, by consuming short-form content, we unknowingly condition our brains to focus for a few seconds. The advent of TikTok has aggravated this issue and blown it out of proportion. Being able to achieve a "flow" state and indulge in deep work is a valuable trait which can set one apart from their peers, especially with most of them being distracted and unable to concentrate on a task.
On the surface, social media seems harmless. However, it robs us of the most invaluable resource at our disposal - Time. Time wasted is time lost.
If time was something materialistic, like jewellery and money, would you still waste it?
With age, I delved into self-improvement and evaluated the time I wasted each day. 90 minutes a day is almost 630 minutes a week, 2520 minutes a month, and 30240 minutes a year! That's 504 hours of my life wasted doing absolutely nothing. 504 hours that could be used to improve myself, learn new skills, read books, or even rest!
I decided to take a huge step back from social media in April 2023, when the project I was working on was picking up steam. I deactivated my Instagram account for almost 3 weeks and noticed tangible results. My concentration skyrocketed, I got a ton of stuff done, and I had time to do other things.
In The Matrix, Morpheus offers Neo the Blue Pill and Red Pill and says,
Remember, all I'm offering is the truth, nothing more.
The 3 weeks I spent without social media felt like consuming the red pill and unplugging from the matrix. The dogma I had built around social media crumbled. Let me condense a few things I learnt during those 3 weeks:
As of writing this, I have initiated the deletion of my account and have been free of social media (barring YouTube and LinkedIn) for the past 3 and a half weeks. I have no plans of creating an Instagram account anytime soon. Finding myself in the formative years of my career, I believe social media serves as nothing but a distraction from my purpose.
Greg McKeown emphasises the importance of eliminating fluff and focusing on what is essential in his book, "Essentialism". Social media (again, barring YouTube and LinkedIn) add no substantial value to my life. On the contrary, they serve as an impediment to growth.
Social media has helped us in desperate times. However, for me personally, it does not aid me to achieve the lofty goals I have set for myself. Working on myself and consistently taking strides to be the best version of myself gives me more happiness than anything.
I understand the need to be answerable while using YouTube and LinkedIn and have taken the necessary steps to ensure the responsible use of these apps.
A small disclaimer - I'm not telling you how to live your life. This is my perspective on the subject of social media. Quitting social media (at least for the subsequent years) seems logical.
Not to sound like a broken record, but time is the most invaluable asset in our possession - use it wisely.