Mule

The problem with social media and technology is this: satiation.

We as humans want to connect and share with people, we want to accomplish things and be respected for those things and we want to be included in something bigger than ourselves. The problem with social media is that it can be a cheap stand in for those things. Posting, liking, texting gives us just enough dopamine buzz to trick ourselves into not feeling lonely, lazy, or not included. It’s like filling up on popcorn when you’re hungry.

Our muscles for doing those things get smaller over time then- we don’t invite people over because we commented on their video earlier and we feel just enough connected. We don’t call, we text. We don’t plan, we react. We aren’t hungry enough to do the harder stuff. We post a picture of a project in progress, but our “finish” muscles gets weaker because we receive just enough praise that we lose steam. This affects us in small ways over years.

A substance abuser can most often see the damage in their health and relationships but can’t stop. Technology is more covert because we are looking at a cardboard cutout of what we are looking for. We don’t know what we are missing.

Be ruthless with breaking that habit. I use the Moment app to track my phone usage. It gives me an alert every 15 minutes, graphs my time. What I learned, and what they’ve shown with other users, is that we underestimate our time by half. I’m conscious of my usage but when I started I was still using my phone 3 hours a day. I delete the apps that are the biggest offenders. I also use Liberate to block websites. I found myself going to Yahoo to look at news headlines, just to type in “yahoo.com” while I was already on the page. Scary. Check yours. You’ll be scared as well.

-Matt