I have spent the last few weeks looking inwards at what I want from life, and what external forces might be pulling me in contradictory directions. It’s safe to assume that the things we give the most attention to are most likely to shape our reality and influence the direction we take and feeling we have. Therefore, I have to look at what I give the most attention to and if it is serving my own interests or something else entirely.

Online Devices

Smartphones have become so ubiquitous within our society that the very idea that it could be problematic raises so many questions. I’m sure most people have considered their relationship to social media specifically, but also how dependent we are on these devices for just everyday services. Cars, laundry, banking, tickets for events, smart home devices, and GPS, are all facets of our life that require us to have a smartphone with no direct analog counterpart without an alternative method entirely. Removing the smartphone from your life would not make these tasks impossible, but would add friction that many would consider not worth the effort. I have come to accept that this is not only the wrong cost/benefit analysis, but entirely necessary for us to strive to attain.

My phone was taking up an amount of my attention that, at first, I couldn’t believe. Hours a day on Twitter and YouTube, mindlessly scrolling to look at the breaking news of the day, or listening to someone else tell me what to think about a topic. Now with AI, these content creators are just regurgitating slop to you that they themselves don’t even understand as they read from an AI-generated script that is all too easy to identify if you are paying attention. These content creators are robbing themselves of the very thing that make them stand out from traditional media, their authenticity and individuality. I would tell myself that watching YouTube wasn’t social media because “I’m learning things.” When the substance of the content you watch is driven by an algorithm, it becomes someone else’s curriculum for you. These sites use your participation to train the algorithm to know what to give you next in an endless loop to assure you spend the maximum amount of attention there and produce ad revenue for them. They have no interest in you leaving the platform. Most people are aware of this.

These social media companies are built and funded completely off our attention. Starve them of our attention and they cease to exist. Easier said than done, but this is arguably a net positive for all of us. We need to reconnect with real life and the people around us. Instead of being rage-baited every time we open Twitter, or get sucked into a 45-minute YouTube video on a cultural/political topic that enrages us, we should choose silence. If you add AI into the mix, now you’re looking at fake accounts and content created by this AI whose sole purpose is to enrage you and keep you engaged on the platform. The Internet is dying and our humanity and essence will go with it if we choose to stay there.

Real silence from the noise of the internet is something rare nowadays, and I think that it will be looked at as increasingly valuable.

Your lived experience

Most of the time, the content we view has little to no impact on our actual lives. Knowing about something happening around the world just isn’t going to affect you as much as you think it will. Most people argue that staying informed is important, and they look down on people that aren’t aware of internet trends, conspiracies, or talking points, and would identify them as ignorant “normies”. If I had to guess, there is an element of a fear of missing out you experience when away from your devices that makes you feel like you are not as educated as you could be. Honestly, ask yourself, “Even if I knew the injustices facing the world and people around me, have I ever actually done anything about it?” Likely, you just got angry, made a comment, and then liked someone else’s post affirming your own beliefs. None of which changes anything about what is happening around the world, let alone your daily life.

Another symptom of people forming communities online is that the incentives for everyone to act fairly are much lower than in real life. Wherever you live, there are people that share that neighborhood or town with you, and it benefits both of you to not act maliciously or deceitfully, because you will surely be running into these people on a regular basis. This cannot be said for online connections. We can log off and never be heard from again and there are no similar repercussions. It also follows that online movements suffer a similar problem. There is very little incentive to do anything risky that could actually change anything, because if you are a bad actor, you can just log off and avoid any excommunication or social damage. Organized movements in the past relied on people seeing the other members face to face and this makes us vulnerable.

I am not convinced we can have societal movements that are online-only and have no in-person organization.

Addiction

We can all admit that social media is addictive to some extent. I believe at some point in the future, we will look at people that mindlessly scroll on their devices just like we do smokers or alcoholics. We feel empathy, pity, and a sense of duty to help rehabilitate them if they are close to us. Look around you when you go to a restaurant or any other public place. Children on tablets and adults on their phones. No social interactions take place between strangers outside the immediate group outing they are on. No sense of shared community with the people eating the next table over. In fact, in most places it would be frowned upon to have a conversation with a stranger in these scenarios. We’re all so isolated from each other while getting our much-needed social fix from our online networks.

There is a cope and denial that you probably feel at this point. I’m asking you to put the phone down and log off, to interact with the people that are breathing the surrounding air. I felt it too, “I’m not addicted” (Yes I am). Talking to someone you see every day for the 30-minute lunch break you get at work, or god forbid, sitting in silence with your thoughts and having to stare at the drab white/gray colored walls is vastly more boring than opening your phone and diving into a world of thoughts that others are sharing. We are allowing the phones to do all the thinking for us. What to think about X or Y, “oh an advertisement, should I buy this?” Over and over until we put the phone down, it’s overstimulating compared to real life without the screens. All of these are trademarks of an addiction, and we are in collective denial about how badly we are addicted to our screens.

Beauty in the World around us

If our phones and our devices are what we give the most attention to, it follows that we should expect to see the physical world around us be less well maintained. We aren’t forced to stare at the beige walls and the decaying architecture. Instead, we look down into our phone and escape into a world curated for us by corporations that want ad revenue. There is a type of escapism for everyone out there. Shopping, scrolling, gaming, movies, short form videos, the list goes on and on. I’m not one to say escapism is purely a vice, but it should be done in moderation.

“To escape” means to not be where you currently are, which, if we are talking about our daily lives and surroundings, is profoundly depressing. We should put in maximum effort to make our lives and the world around us beautiful so that when we escape we can bring some of the beauty in the world around us with us into our fantasies and vice versa. There should be no existential dread when we return from our escapist fantasies. This is a symptom of a degraded life.

Going Forward

If you intend to log off and spend more time in the world around you, don’t expect a revelation, at least not at first. As I mentioned, these devices are designed to give us dopamine to keep us engaged and real life is simply just not that exciting in comparison. This is further exaggerated if you have neglected your life in exchange for cheap dopamine on screens. It will take time for you to normalize and apprecitae the little things as well as build up your life to be something you don’t often find yourself wanting to escape from.