Escaping Social Media

The year was 2013,
and I had an awesome company phone.
photo by Kata Varga

As an old millennial, that “digital native” label just doesn’t apply to those of us who grew up in the age of dial-up internet.

We lived without smartphones. Although, I did use a pager before trading it in for a flip phone in 2006. 

Social media was our neighbourhood Robin's Donuts where we all hung out.  

And we got bored. All the time. We couldn’t whip out a phone and check the ‘Gram while we waited for a bus. If we were smart, we brought a book. But mostly, we just waited and did nothing…

I’m not like every old millennial. I was a slow adopter. Some of my peers jumped onto new tech as soon as they could. I still remember a media-information-techno-culture friend patiently explaining the difference between MySpace and Facebook in 2006 -- the year of my flip phone.

As time wore on, I slowly started adopting these technologies and social media (a word that wasn’t even used then). It began with that MSN instant messenger. Then creeped into Facebook. Twitter. And so on.

Older millennials like me weren’t entirely prepared for it, because we didn't grew up with it. People made jokes about their "CrackBerry." MSN chat interrupted our essay writing time. You checked your Facebook daily for updates. Twitter was firehose of realtime... "content."

At some point, social media and its ilk stopped being a novelty and become a compulsive thing you did when you opened a tab on your brower, looked at your phone, or when you were bored. And most of the stuff didn't matter much.

By 2012, I had enough. I was going to quit it all. Which would not have been hard. I had email. I had a flip phone. I could call my small circles of friends. Send a terse SMS to my mom. Mostly, I met friends and family face-to-face.

Then I moved to Budapest. Suddenly, these social media traps became more difficult to escape. Without face-to-face interactions, Facebook felt like a legitimate way to keep in touch. I wasn’t seeing family and friends every few days, so at least I had a witty update or a nice looking photo to share. I clicked "Like" to tell them I liked something and let them know I'm there.

And so social media remained in my life, becoming a lifeline back home. To quit Facebook or Instagram or any of that would sever that lifeline.

Since then, I've tried to achieve balance with social media. Its utility is hard to dismiss, but its compulsive nature is easy to resent. Remember that old saying? "If you're not paying for it, you're the product." I wanted to use social media without being used. 

But that’s next to impossible. These things are cleverly designed to hijack our attention. We upload photos and check for the ‘Likes,’ again and again. Every new feature, newsfeed tweak, smartphone notification is an underhanded way to get us to log on and get sucked in.

It feels like the only way to stop being used by social media is to stop using social media.

I'm not quite there, yet. With family and friends far away, I can't deny that social media does have its uses. So, I've been experimenting with quitting without quitting.

I tried no social media first thing in the morning. Then most of the day. I deleted most social media apps from my phone. Shut off most notifications. I check my accounts weekly, if that. 

The change has been incredible. A background anxiety that I didn’t know existed has evaporated.

When I see an amazing thing, my first impulse isn't always to whip out my phone to snap an Instragram-worthy photo. It can be an amazing thing that I can experience, without thinking about the little ripples it will make in my tiny social media following.

It's actually nice to be bored sometimes, alone with my own thoughts, without inputs screaming into my skull. 

I feel better. 

And it’s not a new feeling.  As an older millennial, I remember life without constant connection. Sure, we still had to go to Blockbuster to rent a movie, get our party photos professionally developed, and ask someone about their relationship status. But there was a stillness in our lives back then. 

Drastically cutting my social media use has shown that stillness wasn't a young-person-with-nothing-better-to-do thing. It was a social media thing.

There are drawbacks to my quitting social media without quitting it. Long-distance relationships maintained by these social media channels aren’t being as well maintained. Getting acccustomed to simply posting and liking "content" on my social account has made me lazy.

So, I’m recommitting to chat groups, emails, and video calls. I'm also recommitting to this blog and its comments section (so write back, if you feel like it!). 

This new habit is not a final solution to our social media problem. There are engineers and scientists constantly tweaking and optimizing their social media platforms to hook us, so I'll have to keep tweaking my habits to stay ahead of them. I might even write another update here.

Playground Rules

When Berliner parents take their kids to the playground, or Spielplatz, they often bring little buckets, shovels, and other sand toys. The parents plop them into the sand. The kids either play with them or run towards the more interesting swing or slides.

Other kids find the unattended sand toys and play with them. There's a sand toy social contract that says it's alright to share your toys at the Spielplatz.

My son discovered a toy dump truck at one of our local playground and started playing with it. That moment of bliss (he's going through a construction vehicle obsession phase) lasted about 10 seconds.

Another kid screamed NEEEIIIIIIN!!!!! He ran across the playground to Levi. He snatched the excavator from him and shouted Nein! once more. Levi ran crying to me. The other kids' mother tried to explain the concept of sharing to him. Not all kids grasp the sand toy social contract.

Our neighbourhood playgrounds offer endless opportunities for surreal interactions like this. 

Children in Germany are astonishingly good at lining up to await their turn on the slide. They give space to the youngsters. They won't push or shove unless someone plays with their sand toys. Then they drop the gloves.

Social distancing can also be easily described as social awkwardness, expecially around strangers. 

Kids have been picking up on this social awkwardness. I see it with Levi. He sees another kid, and he wants to play, but he stands back, cautiously. You can see the wheels turning. Should we play? Is it safe? Why wouldn't it be safe? Maybe I'll just stare from a safe distance for a little while longer...

Playgrounds are an oasis for the kids during a lockdown. But smartphones are clearly a survival tool for bored parents who visit the same Spielplatz day in, day out. I decided a while ago to stop looking at my phone when I’m out with Levi. If you try this, you will start notice how much time other parents are on their phone at the playground.

My favourite is the dad – and it’s almost always a dad – who looks at their phone and gets sucked in. They’re mesmerized and lose all track of time. Their kid – because they’re a kid and can't stay still for longer than 7.4 seconds – runs off to another end of the playground while the dad is lost in his screen.

After a few minutes, the dad looks up to where their kid was playing a few minutes ago and doesn’t see them. A bunch of expressions play out on his face. Surprise. A bit of panic. Mostly it’s that facial expression that says Oh, no, I have to tell the mother that I lost our kid because I was playing Break-a-Brick. 

There’s a frantic visual scan of the playground, but it's a subtle visual scan, because he doesn't want to make a scene. Then there's relief when he sees his kid at the other end of the playground. Then finally, a smile of satisfaction as he resumes his game of Break-a-Brick.

What I learned from Christopher Plummer

Back in 2004, my old university gave Christopher Plummer an honorary degree. I covered it for the student newspaper, guessing it would be like most of these ceremonies: coma-inducingly dull. Not this one. Plummer stole the show.

He leaped to the podium and bombastically cried out to all the newly minted graduates that, "You have finally escaped! Let's hear it for the inmates!"

Then, he took a more somber tone, and admitted he always regretted not attending university. He wished he got to experience the fellowship and camaraderie that comes with a few good years of university. Then he signed off with a rousing call to grab life by the neck and hold it close, or something far more eloquent like that.

Afterwards, there was a short press scrum with some local press. One reporter asked about his regret over not getting a degree.

Plummer corrected him. No, he said, I don't miss the degree. What I regret is missing out on the university experience. The rich friendships that come from that experience. The camaraderie.

 

Whether he was playing to the crowd or not, his regret of not getting the university experience – like most regrets when someone admits them – was also advice: We should wring as much experience from this surreal time as possible. 

That advice didn’t turn my worldview upside down. It did confirm my existing bias for mixing academics with debauchery. I worked hard on my class assignments and wrote for the student newspaper. I also partied hard, destroyed my hearing at loud concerts in small dive bars, travelled when I could, crashed on countless couches, and even tossed a dwarf. Along the way, I made life-long friends who shared in those experiences.

Now I'm older, and slightly wiser, so I know that Plummer’s advice isn't just good university advice. It’s damn good life advice. You don’t even need to go to university. Life well lived is an informal education made up of new experiences, strong friendships, and, to use Plummers’ term, camaraderie. 

Whether I was predisposed to this point-of-view or Plummer influenced me, I'm not sure. I usually opted for grabbing the richer experience than the "smart" move. Stay home or go out and meet friends. Stick around in Toronto or move to Budapest. Big or small, grabbing those crazy choices that life threw at me unlocked incredible experiences, sparked new relationships, and strengthened existing friendships – or camaraderie. 

If you read Plummer's obituaries, you see a man who’s seeking different roles and stories. Acting on Broadway, or in Hollywood. The Sound of Music then Hamlet. A historical drama here, a crime thriller there. How about Star Trek IV? Lead roles, bit roles, and everything in between. That sounds like a man building a life, grabbing one experience after another. That's a good life, and education, to emulate.