It's All Just Commercials Now, Anyway

in which I discuss the decay of social media, creativity, and the modern attention span

You log onto Instagram or TikTok, or whatever your app is, and what do you see? Short videos, 15-30 seconds long, dressed up to be eye-catching for a moment, until the next shiny thing catches your attention. Sometimes there will be photos, or slide-decks, but they’re doing the same thing. There’s a caption, sure, but you skim it at best as your mind wanders on to the next thing, and the next, and do I have any new notifications? You don’t remember what you see, much less what you read. It’s all lightning-fast content made for the rabbit hole we call a “feed,” meant to keep you locked in: scrolling, scrolling, scrolling—consuming, consuming, consuming, and never stopping to think about it until it’s too late.

Welcome to content purgatory.

As writers, we have a sort of tank that we pull from when we produce content. That tank is filled by things like life experiences, good books, good art, good music, thought-provoking articles, etc. However, instead of spending our time consuming these things, we spend our time consuming static.

Whether you’re bored or lonely, uninspired or just plain worn out, the glowing world of instant, easy stimuli and cheap dopamine is just a click away. It’s there to comfort you, to seduce you, to whisper that you’re not really alone, and you certainly aren’t wasting time. You’re connecting, see? Maybe even getting inspired.

Someone I follow on Instagram made a comment recently that struck me. She said, “I feel like a commercial on here.” And I thought, That is the most accurate description of this platform I have ever seen. She said she felt as though what human connection and deep, heartfelt content once existed on there had dried up—and she’s right. People will blame this on reels, but it started before that. It started when the algorithms began to dictate what sort of content would get promoted, versus what content would be thrown into the gutter. And people dutifully began to conform.

I hate to say this, but good written content (by which I mean, content that fills the creative tank) isn’t to be found on Instagram, or TikTok, or any of those dopamine-fueled fun houses. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist on there; I’m simply saying that you can no longer hope to find it beneath the schizophrenic firehose of packing peanuts.

It’s all commercials now.

It’s like trying to watch a show that gets interrupted every five minutes by twenty minutes of ads. It’s impossible to concentrate. You can literally feel your attention span eroding as you scroll, which is kind of terrifying. And the erosion of attention span is inevitably followed by the erosion of creativity. The fruit of this can be seen everywhere in our society.

I’m leaving Instagram because I want real content again.

I want content that builds my attention span, that causes me to think and process and grow as a writer, rather than be placidly entertained. I want what I consume to fill my creative well, not induce a drought. I’ve been living in the wasteland of commercialized content—blink and it’s gone—for far too long, and it has taken a long time for me to really be honest with myself about how much that was affecting me and my ability to create in the way that I used to before I set foot in that world.

And that’s just it: it’s easy to tell yourself that going there fills your tank, but the second you leave, you know the truth.

There’s something almost eerie in how much it drains you. Something uncanny about the void it leaves when you realize you’ve spent thirty minutes—an hour—in stasis when you could have been producing—or at least, consuming something rich, intelligent, and life-giving.

It’s no wonder we are a depressed, isolated, creatively-zapped society. It’s like a drug we’re all hopelessly addicted to—and even once we realize this, we try to justify why, really it’s okay to stay; it’s not that bad, after all—I can manage this.

I’m not saying there’s no purpose to having social media. God knows, marketing is a necessary evil for the self-employed writer. But we at least have to be honest with ourselves about the minefield we’re standing on, and if you can escape, do it. Even if it’s temporary. I’m certain you won’t regret it.