The Great Deactivation
Is logging off of social media truly the answer to our problems?
Over the last few weeks, at least a half-dozen people sent me an essay by social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, provocatively titled, “Why The Past 10 Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” As it turns out, they needn’t have sent it, because I read the entire piece the day it was published and had already sent it to loads of my own friends and colleagues. Haidt has written the single most incisive and comprehensive examination of the problems created by widespread social media adoption that I have yet to read, and I encourage those of you that have appreciated my own musings on social media to read this essay. His operative metaphor linking social media’s promise to unite the world to that of the Tower of Babel is simply perfect, as the fragmentation of reality that has occurred since the rise of these platforms eerily echoes that of the biblical story. But, I’ll stop giving spoilers; read the article and see if you enjoy it as much as I did.
Early this year, I made the decision to stop using my own social media accounts — a decision in no small part inspired by another excellent work, The Social Dilemma, and buoyed by my own nostalgia for the creativity of the pre-apps, “Weird Internet” era. Being somewhat of an early adopter of social media, I harbored no illusion that this would be a smooth, withdrawal-free process. I also imagined that, once the initial pain period subsided, it would feel a bit like a glorious rebirth; a rediscovery of life’s simple pleasures that could only be accessed after the veil of bottomless news feeds and algorithmic recommendations had been lifted.
My predictions turned out to be partly true, and partly not. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel all that much in the way of withdrawal — although I did become cognizant of all the time I had spent mindlessly posting content to keep my social media accounts up-to-date, instead of tackling creative work that would demand more of my focus. Since ditching social media, I’ve managed to find a lot more time during the day to create and work without the mosquito-like distraction of constant notifications. I am entirely certain that, had I not made this change, this very newsletter and the nice little community that I’ve gotten to know through it would not exist.
As for whether this move has been life-changing beyond better time management: I wish I could say that it has, but it really hasn’t. Psychologically, it’s been fairly non-eventful. I think the very idea that our lives will change if only we did [xyz] is an utterly human construct that speaks to our own inability to understand human nature, and I’m as guilty of that as the next person. So, my verdict is this: quitting or taking a break from social media use will almost certainly improve your time management skills and your ability to focus. It may also provide a great psychological benefit if social media is a major source of stress in your life (read as: if you spent a good amount of time arguing with strangers on Twitter). Other than that, the benefits of getting rid of your social media presence entirely are probably fairly slim (again assuming that you don’t use it primarily to argue with strangers).
I am convinced that it is only at the societal level that a change in our social media habits would result in our lives changing for the better. After all, even those of us that choose to live offline are still forced to live in a world shaped by social media, which has now become home to nearly all of our most important political and cultural discourse. Ignorance may be bliss, but it still fails to exempt us from the reality of a situation. In the present moment — as our societal challenges pile up and efforts to build some consensus anywhere repeatedly fail — that reality is looking increasingly bleak.
So — to borrow another biblical term — is an exodus from social media the answer to our problems? After all, the media has been hyping up The Great Resignation — the trend of workers leaving their current jobs to pursue new, more rewarding work — for the past year. What if a Great Deactivation is just what we need to reset our collective mind and think clearly again?
Haidt’s essay identified 2011 as the year that our metaphorical Tower of Babel — our shining symbol of techno-democratic optimism — was completed. His reasoning was that that was the year saw both the “Arab Spring” uprisings and the widespread adoption of Google Translate. Of the two, Google Translate might seem to be the more direct reference to a cross-language construction project, but it was the wave of uprisings across the Arab world that held greater significance in the development of today’s social media landscape. As Haidt notes, those that champion social media’s ability to bring freedom and democracy to the world almost universally point to the supporting role Twitter played in the uprisings as a pivotal moment that changed history forever. For years to come, it was common knowledge — knowledge that is understood by all to be understood by all — that the social media revolution was not merely an apolitical change of communication medium, but also a democratizing force for justice. Before we dig any deeper into that claim, let’s take a second to revisit the years leading up to that epiphany — in the time of innocence I will hereby refer to as, “The Golden Age of Myspace.”
Ask any of us geriatric millenials and we’ll tell you: social media today is way less fun than it was a decade or so ago. The early social networks — Myspace, Friendster, pre-news-feed Facebook — carried an air of frivolity that, in retrospect, seems downright quaint. They were sites meant for sharing inside jokes with friends, posting silly photos, and bombarding all who visited with the emo song du jour. There was never a consideration that these sites would one day be seen as the appropriate venue for serious policy discussion, let alone the definitive battleground for political campaigns — because those are serious things. Why would we ever co-mingle the serious parts of society with the part that lets us change our profile picture to a cat wearing sunglasses?
There was, of course, an atmosphere of innovation and excitement around the Silicon Valley-based social startups in the early ‘aughts, and a strong belief that their platforms were destined for much, much more than to live out their days as a time capsule of grainy digital photography and Dashboard Confessional lyrics. Turning them into thriving places of commerce became the next objective, and the wealth of data mined from individual users allowed Facebook to develop a robust ad platform for marketers of all budgets. Just like that, the halcyon days of The Golden Age of Myspace was over; its characteristic naïveté to be replaced with the sneering cynicism that comes as a consequence of being forced to endure an endless parade of companies vying for our attention.
Psychology and behavior economics began to inform every new site redesign, and in turn, these sites began slowly redesigning our society — from entertainment to science to politics. Gradually, the atmosphere of cynicism took on a more vicious tone, as engagement algorithms began to favor Dark Triad traits and amplify expressions of negativity moreso than positive, prosocial behaviors. Outrage brokers built large followings through sensationalism and straw man fallacies. Peddlers of conspiratorial narratives found an audience all too willing to amplify their fringe beliefs, as trust in institutions declined. Public shaming became a socially encouraged behavior, as online mobs of disaffected users quenched their thirst for vengeance by targeting individuals they deemed as exhibiting objectionable behaviors or attitudes. The effects of all this began to spill over into the real world, and opening a new social media account soon came with a second, unwritten user agreement: your posts could help you land your dream job, or get you labelled as unhirable for a lifetime, so don’t mess up. The days of treating social media as a mere diversion were over; seemingly overnight, the stakes had suddenly become very, very high.
This new culture of constant surveillance, attacks on reputation, and campaigns to ostracize — often referred to as cancel culture — is quite accurately described by Haidt as a “democratization of intimidation.” The ability for anyone, anywhere to target any individual with an online mob-supported intimidation campaign is the dark side of the promise to give voice to the powerless that social media presents in its glossy brochures. While social media has indeed been an effective tool in uncovering corruption and criminal misconduct, it has also left a great deal of collateral damage in its wake. Due process does not exist merely to protect the powerful; it exists to protect the powerless, just the same. Although much of the media coverage around this phenomenon focuses on social media campaigns against high-profile celebrities with great wealth, large followings and easy access to publicists, there exist numerous non-celebrity victims of “cancellation” campaigns that have quietly lost jobs and reputations after being targeted by online mobs that acted before all of the exonerating facts were in. When it comes to trial by social media, guilty-until-proven-innocent is the prevailing ethos — just as it was during the times that gave us the Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism.
The most chilling “cancellations” may very well be the ones that have happened to ordinary people that were simply misunderstood or taken out of context. However, it should be no less chilling to us when such vitriolic shaming happens to a young adult that, indeed, should have known better than to do or say something foolish on social media. If our goal is to help a generation of young people become the best versions of themselves, then we need to demonstrate that in a compassionate way and not aim to cripple them under the weight of a large-scale shaming that is absolutely certain to result in lasting psychological damage. Those that parrot the refrain that “there is no cancel culture, only accountability” are ignoring the obvious false equivalency of such a statement. The aim of these social media campaigns are, in fact, to cancel — to bully the target into hiding and take away their future educational and career opportunities. Beyond the promise of a fair trial, a true “accountability culture” also leaves room for penance, forgiveness, and compassion.
If we’re honest, everyone hates cancel culture. No one would willingly choose to live in a world with no forgiveness, only punishment. Unfortunately, many of our institutions, universities, and corporations have demonstrated that they rarely possess the courage to remain principled in the face of such perceived public pressure. It is not surprising to me, then, that lots of young people are taking the matter into their own hands, by choosing to opt out of the places that engender it altogether. After all, they understand this phenomenon far better than anyone else; they’ve grown up with social media, and have seen firsthand how the democratization of intimidation has been used as a bullying tool by their own peers.
Indeed; “cancel culture” as it applies to teenage girls is particularly pernicious. Today, the timeworn tactics of passing notes and scrawling offensive screeds on a bathroom stall sound as quaint as Myspace, when compared to the modern toolkit of humiliation that apps like Instagram offer. Persistent, bullying messages, group chats designed to exclude and ridicule, and school wide gossip pages that may be viewed by the entire world are but a few of the awful things that teen girls today must endure online. Some have even had to contend with anonymous “hate” pages made against them. The results of this have been entirely unsurprising: in the last decade, teen girls have experienced a sharp uptick in depression, anxiety, and self-harm.
Growing up in a world shaped by social media can be quite miserable for some, and it doesn't seem to get much better after adolescence, either. Ideological polarization — of which social media is no doubt the primary modern contributor — has turned many of the major platforms into tedious, argumentative places; a world, as Haidt points out, that is run by the most aggressive online personas. Even the claim that social media has been largely a force for democracy and freedom worldwide is up for debate. For every example of social media being used to further democratic ideals, there’s also an example of the many ways that these platforms have served as tools of propaganda wielded by repressive, authoritarian governments looking to shape public opinion, eliminate dissent, and interfere in free elections in other countries. In fact, a scientific paper cited by Haidt found that “the large majority of reported associations between digital media use and trust appear to be detrimental for democracy.”
If this is indeed the case, merely addressing politically-biased moderation practices of a single platform — as billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has promised to do with his recent $44 billion purchase of Twitter — is little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (perhaps installing some new siding on the Tower of Babel is a more appropriate metaphor here). As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message — and the message of Twitter is one that is nasty, brutish, and short. In truth, Twitter has never been the Town Square; it’s always been the Town Bathroom Stall, and perhaps our uniquely stupid mistake over the past decade has been to treat it as a place for serious discussion, instead of merely just another slightly-less-frivolous iteration of Myspace. It is entirely fantastical to believe that a medium that prioritizes a 280 character limit above all could ever be an effective venue for meaningful discourse. In fact, the best outcome from a discourse perspective would probably come from Musk purchasing Twitter — and then abruptly deleting it, altogether.
However, having spent just about enough time away from social media to clear my own head, I don’t think that a Great Deactivation is actually what we need to get things back on track. In fact, it sounds like an idea that would be spawned on social media, alongside any other number of severe-but-not-truly-feasible treatments for societal ills. Rash, reactive solutions are rarely lasting ones, as evidenced by the fact that many that participated in the much-heralded Great Resignation seem to already be experiencing some Great Regrets. There is no doubt in my mind that a fad-driven widespread abandonment of social media would lead to a similar outcome; it’s simply too late to put that genie back in the bottle.
Rather than a Great Deactivation, I think we need a Great Realignment of our online world — a shift in how we use these platforms that is informed by a clear, collective understanding of their limitations. Some of this responsibility no doubt must be shouldered by the social media giants themselves, and Haidt, The Social Dilemma tech ethicist Tristan Harris, and “Stolen Focus” author Johann Hari all have ideas worthy of consideration on this front. Most importantly, however, articles like Haidt’s play an important role in diagnosing the problem in no uncertain terms, so that this knowledge can one day become common knowledge. It is at this point that our beliefs about social media’s possibilities will become better aligned with social media’s capabilities. Instead of forcing ourselves to build an ill-fated Tower of Babel, we can learn to accept the limitations of this still-fledgling medium and use it only in ways that truly benefit us — both as individuals and as a society.
After all, it is up to us, the public, to change the way we use these mediums that is more in line with their message. Memes are not policy recommendations. Tweets are not news. TikToks are not a replacement for books. Reddit is not the same as research. Conspiratorial narratives are not the same as hard evidence. Hashtags are not activism. An online mob is not a criminal justice system. Engaging in the metaverse is not a replacement for engaging in the physical world. If something feels too easy to be true, it usually is, and believing that we can entertain ourselves into enlightenment will lead only to us amusing ourselves to death. By all means — we should continue to use social media to stay in touch with our friends and family, to build our businesses and network with others, and to share our jokes, memes, art, music, and inspiration. We should, however, refuse to view it as our chief and ultimate forum for serious societal concerns and policies, lest we degrade these concerns by regarding them in the same manner that we regard a personality quiz that tells our celebrity doppelgängers. Serious matters deserve careful consideration in serious forums that limit the potential for out-of-context statements, misinformation, and a whole host of rhetorical fallacies to coalesce into — to quote Haidt — “[the] kind of twitchy and explosive spread of anger that James Madison had tried to protect us from as he was drafting the U.S. Constitution.” Until we figure out a way to realign our societal discourse in a more sensible manner, logic and experience will continue to be superseded by emotion and performance, in matters that deserve far better.
As for me — I may return to social media someday, but I haven’t felt the need to do so just yet. Somewhat counterintuitively, it feels as though disconnecting from the social media world has granted me a bit of perspective and a bit more empathy, to match; if you’ve disconnected from these apps in the past, you’ve likely experienced the same. Stepping away from the Tower of Babel comes with a realization that the view from inside is a myopic one, and that it doesn’t feel entirely right to pin the blame on its occupants for routinely missing the forest from the trees.
Maybe the real tragedy of Myspace, Friendster, and the other nascent social media networks wasn’t their eventual obsolescence. Maybe it was that we didn’t understand how good we had it back then.
Or, to quote The Ataris’ 2003 hit, “In This Diary” — which naturally received heavy rotation on Myspace profiles everywhere:
“I guess when it comes down to it
Being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up.”
-SB
5/15/22 - I loved reading all the various responses to my recent musing, “Learning To Improvise.” As I mentioned in the piece, improvisation is a skill that we all utilize quite a bit in our lives, and it was fun to hear how my readers employ that skill in everything from songwriting to video production to teaching history.
A couple of readers also mentioned how it took an inspiring teacher to help them take their improvisational skills to the next level. I think this is more often than not the case. When a great educator tells you, “this is a skill that takes an entire lifetime to master, is incredibly frustrating at times, and is seldom highly profitable…and despite all that, it is still worth doing, and here’s why,” you believe them.
In my case, learning the niche genre of stride piano virtually guaranteed that there would be no teachers for me within a 50 mile radius, but I still count two jazz educators as a source of inspiration: Wynton Marsalis and Marian McPartland.
Growing up, I never missed a Marsalis appearance on PBS; his love for jazz — and in particular, its New Orleans roots — was self-evident. When I was 14, Jazz At The Lincoln Center — the organization that Marsalis leads — announced a high school jazz band competition, based around the compositions of Duke Ellington. I wrote to them, posing as a high school band director, in order to receive a copy of the Duke Ellington big band arrangements that were to be played, and poured over their intricacies for almost a year. It was a great introduction to arranging.
During this time, I never missed an episode of Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz radio show, either. The concept was simple: nothing more than McPartland and a guest discussing jazz and playing tunes for and with one another. McPartland’s execution is what made it brilliant; she paired her own encyclopedic knowledge of music with a genuine fascination with the work of her guests. Her love of piano jazz was the same love that Richard Feynman — another educator that I found to be inspiring — displayed in his lectures on physics. There are great educators, and then there are once-in-a-lifetime sources of inspiration like Marsalis, McPartland, and Feynman.
As always, feel free to write me directly by replying to this email. Word-of-mouth is the only marketing I do for this newsletter, so please also feel free to spread the word by forwarding this piece to anyone that you think might enjoy it!
Enjoy your week,
Scott