Rev Left Radio - Take Back Your Life & Attention: Why You Should Quit Social Media

Episode Date: March 30, 2024

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One of the books I've read in the last month is Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. And it's just really this systematic argument about what smartphones in general, but specifically certain unhealthy habits we have with our smartphones, especially including stuff like social media apps, what they do to us, the corporate psychological tricks of addictive behavior behind it, how it dampens our lives. It overstimulates us with a broad range of everybody else's highlight reels such that you begin to, you know, sort of feel like your life isn't living up to what other people's lives are. I've noticed in myself spending, you know, hours a day on social media, like you just get depressed. You feel like shit.

You feel imbalanced. And then this book makes this really, really important argument about how important our attention span is, how important solitude is, how important boredom is. And one thing that the smartphones have done is they've eradicated boredom. But boredom, it's a form of sort of low-level suffering, but it is also very generative. You know, daydreaming, being in solitude, being left with your own thoughts for prolonged periods of time, is something that humans have taken for granted for millennia. But it's something that is increasingly being sort of knocked out of people's lives from social media. because the moment you feel this slightest itch of boredom, of melancholy, of any negative emotional state,

you know, people in the past have reached for food, reach for alcohol, reach for drugs. In today's world, we reach for our smartphone. I mean, literally a second of boredom, and your hand just moves down and pulls out the phone and you scroll meaninglessly. And then you've got to ask yourself, and this book makes that very clear, this digital minimalism book. the amount of time you put into social media, what do you get back? You know, the average person, I don't know, everybody's different, but let's say you spend several hours, let's say just five hours a week on social media. You can go look at your screen time right now and see five hours a week mindlessly scrolling.

What do you get back in the form of like elevation in your own spirit or work or anything? What do you get back out of spending five hours a week on social? And five hours, by the way, is very conservative. I know some of you out there, like, I hope he doesn't look at my screen time because it's way worse than that. What do you get back for that? Imagine if you spent five hours of working learning how to fish. Imagine if you spent five hours a week reading books. Imagine if you spent five hours a week hanging out with your closest friends and family in real life with your phones turned off.

Imagine if you spent five hours a week doing anything else. You spend five hours on social media. It's like social candy. There's little hits of dopamine when you first taste. the sugar, but then your stomach hurts after a while and you feel like shit because you ate too much. And, you know, I think thinking about social media and these apps, I mean, behind the whole thing, these are corporate pirates. They're trying to get you addicted to these platforms so that they can mine your data and sell them for profit. And we willingly log in every day

to these corporate monopolies and give ourselves our time on this fucking earth, our attention span and every detail about our lives to these corporations who don't give a fuck about anything but profit. And, you know, I really am just convinced by this argument that it's dog shit. And he has a bunch of different anecdotes, a bunch of different strategies to employ, but the basic structure, the basic argument or solution, quote unquote, that digital minimalism advances is take 30 days off from all this shit. you know only leave on your phone absolute bare essentials that you need to survive day to day

that you know etc unfortunately a lot of people's jobs are so phone centered it makes it very difficult etc but for most of us most of the time we don't need to be on it as much as we are what are the essential features of the phone you know texting people that that you care about some people are addicted to texting and that could be a problem right everybody has a different little issues some people are obviously addicted to social media apps some people are addicted to fucking porn. Some people are addicted to just scrolling Reddit or, you know, whatever, whatever it may be. So anyway, his argument is that you should take 30 days sort of a detox from all these apps, right? Delete them off your phone, whatever you need to do. And then after that 30 day

period, you've sort of been psychologically detoxed from the compulsion to use these apps or use this phone in whatever unhealthy way that you do. And then you come back after 30 days and you reorient your relationship to the technology in question. And one thing that jumped out of me is like, hey, instead of having Instagram and Twitter or Facebook or TikTok or whatever it may be on your phone, let's say like, you know, like me, I have pages on for Rev Left on Instagram and Twitter that, you know, not so much on Twitter because that's a fucking shithole. But on Instagram, you know, I'll promote the episodes and stuff.

Okay, well, maybe you have a job where you need to be on at some time, you know, then you set that onto your desktop instead. just think about that move if you took those social media apps that are on your phone that are so easily accessible that are integrated with everything else you use your phone for right there all the time the temptation is there you're at a red light you pull out your phone and you start fucking scrolling um imagine if you just had it on your desktop on your laptop and in order to go on to twitter or instagram or whatever it is um because you need to do something promote a show or check in with family or whatever it may be you have to actually go to your desktop turn it on log into the thing and then you can you can do whatever you need to do for whatever period of time you need to do it, but just having those apps on your desktop and not on your phone could dramatically reorient your relationship to them because they're not just this thing in your pocket 24-7 sort of like tempting you to pull it out and look, but there's something you have to do a couple extra steps to go and do. And I think I'm going to do that after this 30-day break is, you know, there are some things that I need to be on

social media for and it doesn't need to be in my phone. It can be on a desktop. And if I have to promote something or respond to something or whatever i can go to my desktop or my laptop i can log in and i can do whatever there and then shut the laptop turn off the computer and go about my life um and another thing is like this the time you spend with the fucking people that matter you know one of the things the book really said that that really you know hit home for me is we spread ourselves too thin socially that the the likes and the retweets and the nice comments that we get that seem like social interaction on these social media websites are these shadows compared to what real life eye-to-eye physical relationships are. And if you're

spending hours and hours and hours a day having these shallow relationships, a million shallow relationships, you often can neglect those core relationships that actually matter in your real life. Those 10 to 25 people, 1 to 15 people, whatever it is for you, that actually matter, your family, your friends, the people that you're in community with. And there's this trick that social media plays like he gave an example in the book you know your friend just has a baby and in the age of social media what what can you do as a friend of somebody that has a baby well you'll see their post about having a baby you'll heart react the post leave a nice comment congratulations i'm so happy for you guys right and that's now taking the place of what we

used to do in the past which is pick up the telephone and call our friend or god forbid drive to our friend's house to see the baby, to hold the baby, to have some conversation with them eye to eye face to face. That's actually the stand in for that now is to like and comment. But guess what your like and comment is? It's one among many. There are 100 likes on that post. There are 47 comments on that post, all saying more or less the same thing. And your friend's relationship to you is now diluted by you being one of many sort of just little profile picks that said something nice. And yeah, they'll like and say, thank you so much. much. And now that stood in for an actual real social interaction with that person.

You know? And imagine if the people you really care about, whatever, they have a baby. They get married. Something good happens in their life. They get a bunch of comments and likes from, you know, people that are supposed to be very close to them. And that's all those people do. But you're the person that actually picks up the phone and says, hey, I would love to come over and see the new baby. Or let's jump on the phone for like 30 minutes and just talk, what's going on? How are you doing? Much more intimate and you start standing. out, oh, this is somebody that goes above and beyond in the modern day to have a relationship with me. And that, I think, is really important. And there's no question in my head why so many

people today feel so lonely, feel so isolated, feel so alienated, feel unable to talk to people, feel awkward to talk to people. I've, you know, just like walking, like if I'm riding my bike around my neighborhood sometimes. Like, I'll pass somebody, right, walking their dog or riding their bike or whatever, and I'm always trying to, like, you know, I'm not a scary guy. I try to look at them, smile, wave, say hi. And I don't know, maybe this has always been the case. I'm reading too much into it, but it feels like 90% of people will, like, go out of their

way to look away. Like, they don't, they can't, it's like they don't want to be social or they're not used to being social in that. They can't say hi to a stranger. I have neighbors on my own fucking street, and this kills me. I have this couple, like three houses. is up from us who moved in the last two years or something they're roughly me and my wife's age they have a couple small children like we do you know every time they drive up and down our street

or i pass them on my bike and they're out in their driveway anytime there's a possibility for just a glance and a wave they go out of their way to look away i was driving past him uh the the father the other day and he's out in the driveway with his kid i'm riding my bicycle up the sidewalk past his driveway and I'm like now I feel I'm looking at him because I want to like wave you know hi I'm your neighbor that we've fucking seen each other like a hundred times in the last year never once said hi I'm always trying to be like waving and hi hi hi hi community something and he like literally sees like he sort of like sees me out of his periphery coming driving up the the block on my bike and he like looks away like purposefully like he you know he wasn't looking at it he like purposefully looked

away. And I'm like, is, is he intimidated? Is, do I look scary? I'm like, what the fuck is going on? Why can't you, especially in that context, just wave or driving your car down the down the street and, you know, we'll be out in our driveway and he'll be driving up, and him and his wife will be driving up to park two houses down. And I'll like, you know, throw up my hand. Hi. They don't even look. And, you know, maybe that's not necessarily 100% social media. Maybe these one individuals are just a little shy or socially anxious or whatever. But that shit is grotesque to me. And it really has me worried. And I've completely gotten into the arguments from digital minimalism. And I fucking am done with this shit. I'm not,

I'm not handing five hours, 10 hours, 20 hours a week of my life to these corporations. You have one life and then you fucking die. And you don't ever get to experience life again. Maybe. Who knows? Things are crazy. You know, the fact that the universe exists at all is crazy. Who the fuck knows? Anything could happen. But you know what I'm saying. You have all, for all you know, You have one fucking life, and then it's back to being worm food, forever. And we are spending how many hours a year, scrolling mindlessly, putting in way too much information, way too many people's opinions, and we're neglecting our real relationships that actually matter, you know?

When you get that diagnosis and you're in the hospital, who's actually going to show up for you? If you got laid off tomorrow and you got evicted from your house, Who would actually show up from you? The person who likes everything you post on X, Twitter? Or the people in your life that you should have been spending all that time you threw away on these corporate fucking platforms? People in your life you should have been sitting down with, talking with, having relationships with. Who's going to show up?

And once you get that list in your head of people who would actually fucking show up for you when you really need it, you need to start thinking, what is my responsibility to these people and these relationships? I need to be more present for them. I need to be in their lives. I need to pull my weight in these relationships. And I need to lead by example. Because everybody has this phone addiction now. It's just normal.

And so if you can be an example for your family and friends, like, wow, I went out with so-and-so and I didn't even see their phone. I didn't see their phone for the entire time. And then people start thinking, like, wow, that's a nicer way to be. And then your mental health starts improving. Because you're not, we are social animals. Evolution shaped us to have intimate social relationships with roughly, you know, up to 150 people. For 99.9% of human civilization, or even before human civilization, as we're climbing out of the fucking trees, it's precisely our hyper-social nature that has crafted us to be the way we are.

And that also has some interesting effects in the world of the internet, because we are social primates who evolutionarily, you need to be liked. Evolutionarily, if you're in a tribe and you are the asshole, you're the piece of shit that everybody hates, you run a real risk of getting kicked out of that fucking community. And in a state of nature, that means certain death. And so our brains are hardwired to want to be liked. And then you go on to the fucking internet. And if you are, you know, anybody, but especially if you have any sort of platform, if you are, you know, are known in any way, just by being that, you will attract people who hate you.

Just by, just by existing half the time, because the net is so wide of people you're interacting with, there will be people that fucking hate you. They'll talk shit on you. If you have anything going on, they'll try to tear it down. I have that. I've dealt with that since day one with Rev Left. It used to bother the fuck out of me. I want to be liked by everybody, you know? And in the early days of Rev Left, you know, just immediately people start hating you.

In the early days, for example, I shifted away from anarchism. I would do, like, a lot of my earliest episodes were like on anarchism. Not that I even wasn't anarchist, but I was interested in it. And that brought in a huge influx of, like, anarchist-oriented people who really liked Rev. Left, like, the first year. And when I made a more robust shift into, you know, Marxism proper, got much more into Leninism and Maoism, people fought. fucking hated me for that. They felt betrayed and that was just one wave of many, many,

many, many waves I've gotten and still get today of people that fucking hate me. And then you have to ask yourself, is it rational to be invested emotionally in the opinions of strangers on the internet? In the opinions of people who have literally no impact on your life, who you've never met, you don't even know their real names, you don't even know what their face looks like. and they can send you spiraling for days over a negative comment that they made where they shit on you for no reason how irrational is that

but we're hardwired for that and so as long as we're hardwired for sociality I think that we should funnel that social energy into the people that actually fucking matter I do not care if Stalin's 69-420 hates me and Rev Left I do not care if

you know, whoever the fuck has some shit about me that they want to tear me down and make sure I see their shit. I don't care. I don't even need it into my head. Who do I care about my comrades in real life? And of course, there are people that I've met over the internet who I've developed real friendships for. I care about them deeply. I met Allison, for example, on social media in the early days of Rev left. And for a while, me and Allison's whole relationship was just merely just like knowing each other online. But that relationship developed. We met up, at a conference in Colorado, we hung out in real life, you know, and we've been very close ever since. And now Allison is somebody who absolutely falls in the realm of people I give a fuck about

and actually care about our relationship, care about her opinion of me, and I want that relationship to continue on and be strong. And I'll dedicate time and energy to that, even though she lives in fucking California and I live out here in the hinterlands in the middle of the Great Plains. Um, so I'm not saying that all your social relationships online are meaningless. Absolutely not. There are some real gems in that dirt. And you can and should focus on them and can, you know, give them your phone number, text them, have a real relationship. You don't just have to be on Twitter to interact with people. So anyways, that's a book that I've read that really impacted me. I'm doing the 30-day challenge. I already feel way better. I spend my time doing

way different shit. So in those moments when I'm bored or feeling like shit or in a bad mood that I would usually just increase that bad mood by jumping on my phone and scrolling. I'll jump on a bike and ride around. I'll go do something. I'll hang out with people. You know, I went to a movie with my wife, Dune 2 a couple weeks ago. And, you know, we're coming out of the theater and she has to use the restroom. So we're in this, you know, everybody's leaving the theater.

It was a sort of, you know, obviously packed theater because it was Dune 2 and it was just released. And so, you know, a bunch of people, you know, partners and stuff, they go. and some of us are waiting outside the bathroom while our partner goes in and uses the restroom, right? And in that moment, what is the first thing everybody does? Because you're just sitting by yourself outside the bathroom waiting for your partner to pull out the phone.

What can you possibly get done in 30 seconds that really need you to pull out that phone? Absolutely fucking nothing. But it's now so ingrained in us that it's awkward just to sit there. But I force myself to do it. I'm not pulling my phone out. And then I'm like back in social reality

where it's like, where do I put my eyes? people are walking past me like do I I I can't want to look at them I don't know like what do I do I was like staring up at the sky a little or at the ceiling a little bit like just diverting my eyes upwards that nobody thought I was looking at them but then I felt like the weirdo because I'm sitting out with like literally 10 people who the moment their partner goes in the bathroom they pull out their phones every single person to avoid the social awkwardness of just like existing around people and especially for people who grew up you know after whatever 2001 or whatever the fuck 2007 is when the smartphone came out people that have grown up with this shit it's normal i'm

blessed that i was born in the in the late 80s that i had a full childhood where none of this shit was possible where i played outside every single mother fucking day until the lights came on you know i was like my parents would literally let me wake up at like 9 a.m if i didn't have school and i remember spending 12 hours a day just completely out of my parents view fucking around with the neighborhood kids getting into trouble playing football getting into fights whatever the fuck but i would not trade that for the world because it's so important it's literally socialization like when you get a fucking dog and they're like hey socialize the goddamn dog or it's gonna be a dick and you got to go socialize it with other fucking dogs take it to the dog park

and shit it's good for him and i am horrified haunted brutalized terrorized by the idea of of generations of people coming up where they can't have normal social interactions, even like small talk, even being in a social situation at all is anxiety inducing to a lot of people. And you throw COVID on top of that. A lot of people in their teenage formative years now got isolated for a year or whatever. And it just makes it way worse. As a parent of a two-year-old, a nine-year-old and a 15-year-old, I have to navigate how much I let my children interact with these apps and me and my wife are you know we don't want to be authoritarian freaks you know who try to shelter kids from the reality and like never let them have anything i think if you if you're

an authoritarian parent you you increase the chances of your worst fears coming true the more you try to repress the more unhealthy it comes out eventually that's true emotionally inwardly individually and it's true when it comes to raising kids i've always been a sort of you know um hands-off libertarians anti-authoritarian parent. Of course, every kid is different. Some kids need much more structure and discipline than others. But, you know, I grew up with an extreme amount of freedom. And I'm really grateful for that.

And so I try to allow that with my children as well. But I'm really, you know, just worried about the smartphones and the screens and the constant stimulation that they can have now. They can be bathed in constant dopamine hits and stimulation 24 hours a day if we let them. And I have, you know, I know parents that have kids that I know personally in my life who don't have any hesitation about this shit. And you see little fucking kids. I know, you know, like this four-year-old kid who gets handed a tablet the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep. And that scares the fuck out of me. Just like literally, I've stood over their shoulder and watched them sometimes.

It's just, it's a fucking casino for a baby where you're just scrolling on tick, talk, these little 10 second clips, and imagine what the, what the algorithm for like a five-year-old kid is. It's just the dumbest, stupidest, most insane, nonsensical bullshit to the point where, like, with my kids, I'm like, hey, you can go on Netflix and you can watch a show with a plot, but you can't go on YouTube and watch shibbitty toilet fucking head guy, you know? Watch fucking a Nickelodeon show with a plot, just so you can like understand character, development and like these are human beings interacting and like that's okay because there's something human but if it's just like ding-nin-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-croll scroll scroll here's a cake

it looks like a cellful loop next thing it's just it fucks their little baby brains up and we should think incredibly deeply about what we're doing to ourselves what we're doing to them with all new technology there's this period of time where the technology is integrated and then we start seeing the costs and then there's like a blowback to that. And I don't think we've got, I think we're just getting into the blowback period now because we were really guinea pigs. We were guinea pigs. For the last 20 years, coming up on 20 years, we were guinea pigs for a new technology. And we're starting to see how that technology is destroying us and for what? So Mark Zuckerberg can get more money. So Elon Musk can get more

money and sell your data to other fucking corporations for more money and you're spending how much of your life scrolling? Think deeply about this. I think it's infantilizing. I think it's infantilizing to spend that much time on your phone. It's a pacifier for adults. And there's dignity in saying no thank you. There's real dignity and real integrity and saying no thank you. I'm putting my feet in the real world. I'm making eye contact with real people. All this time I'm dedicated to scrolling for fucking nothing, I'm going to put that energy towards stuff that actually matters and makes my life better. Because when you get done scrolling for three hours, how do you feel? What did you get out of it? You heard a million

people's opinions, 99.999% of which is utterly meaningless and irrelevant to you in your life. And that's what you chose to fill your head up with. And then watch. For a lot of you that do spend so much time on social, go try to read a book. Go try to sit down with your thoughts in a quiet room for fucking 10 minutes and see how your body just fucking wants to crawl out of its own skin how desensitized we've become to dopamine hits constantly boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom and having just to sit in a room with your own thoughts now is a torture technique for many people especially people who are raised on this shit so I know that this is nothing

really new or super insightful but I found digital minimalism to be very convincing. I highly encourage other people to check it out. Just hear the arguments. Maybe you won't agree. But I think he does a really interesting job of laying out the arguments and like, how do you want to spend your life? How do you want to spend your life? And that alone, I think, can really be generative.