I Shut Down Social Media for Two Weeks: Here's What Happened
in which I share my experience of living completely social-media-free for two weeks, and the conclusions I came to about the role it plays in our society
“Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation.”
–Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
It goes almost without saying that the modern person is connected to the online world with such intimacy that it’s virtually incomprehensible. We may think we understand it—especially those of us who are cognizant of our own susceptibility to the addiction—but even then, we “know” it the way we “know” the findings of studies done by this-or-that university with a sample size of such-and-such number of individuals. Interesting, yes, noted, seems reasonable. We don’t look to experiment further—to peer beneath the hood and see what’s driving this thing.
Shutting down social media for a significant period of time (and I mean really shutting it down—no opening the app, even for a brief glance) is like entering another world. Another life. Another reality. (You’ll have trouble believing this if you haven’t been there for yourself.) It’s freedom in a sense that we no longer have the ability to properly articulate, although I will try.
During my time away from the enchanted web of Internetland—as Boomer as it sounds to say—I was shocked to discover a mental clarity that, if I had ever experienced it, was only before I’d had a single social media profile. So, time out of mind.
It was only after a few days of living—deliberately—beyond the influence of the spell that I began to really glimpse for myself the iron fist it has on society. Whenever we’re bored, or lonely, or sad, the world of instant stimuli, contact, and cheap dopamine hits is just a tap away. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, they had soma; we have social media. And what a powerful drug! Even Huxley couldn’t conceive of it.
From the mental clarity I experienced after a few days of being offline came a host of other positive developments: increased focus, energy, motivation, productivity, and human connection. As the mother of a busy ten-month-old, these things are gold. With the same amount of time as two weeks has always been, I managed to finish two books and start a third, write nearly five thousand words in my current novel draft, experiment with things like cooking, baking, and making butter, get outside for hikes with my husband and son, and entertain guests—all of this without the constant haze and overwhelm of noise that comes from a world of endless, buzzing notifications.
It was freedom in the way that standing on a mountaintop with nothing between you and the sky is freedom.
I wasn’t looking for anything profound in this experience (other than solace), but it was there, in a simple conversation we had with some friends of ours one afternoon over tea and brownies: “The best way to escape modernity is to develop self-control.”
It’s in those spaces—the ones created by self-discipline and intention, without scrolling, without liking, without skimming words you don’t actually read—that a thought might form, and the forming of a thought, of a desire that cannot be fulfilled via instant gratification, is a threat to the conditioning needed to maintain the careful web of Modernity.
See, the machine works best when it’s invisible. When you don’t notice it. When you’re conditioned to its noise. It hums away under your pillow at night, as much a part of your home, your life, as the bed you sleep in and the people you live with.
It’s comfortable this way, and “society” works best when everyone is placidly comfortable, happy, consuming. Don’t put down the phone. Don’t pick up a book. Don’t touch the grass.
Feed on the machine. Let it entertain you. Let it comfort you. Let it control you.
Whatever you do, don’t say, as John Savage does in Brave New World: “[…] I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness.”
For the love of every gossamer thread of the Web, don’t do that.