Resources for Quitting Social Media
About a year ago, I decided to leave social media. (For more info about that decision, check out my post Why I Decided to Quit Social Media.)
At the time, it was a terrifying prospect. I worried I’d miss out on major events in close friends’ lives, feel confused in conversation, and lose important tools for promoting my work.
Perhaps most importantly, as someone who’s moved and traveled a lot, I worried about losing touch with the amazing communities I’ve built thousands of miles away.
I’m not really worried about any of those things now.
In large part, that’s because incredible thinkers have done this before me and left behind their wisdom. And with their help, I not only determined why I wanted to leave social media in the first place; I figured out how to replace the benefits in a meaningful way.
Here are some of those resources and why I found them so helpful. If you’re interested in cutting back or quitting social media for good, maybe one of these very smart people will offer some guidance for you, too.
And if you need support in the process or have any questions, always feel free to reach out.
General Philosophy Behind Leaving
These two book were the most important in my journey. The first helped me decide it was time to move on. The second helped me figure out what I wanted to do with my time instead.
The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World
by Max Fisher
This is the current magnum opus on what social media has done to our brains, communities, and world. Dark and intensely-researched, it reads at times like a thriller. Fisher dives into social media’s villainous role in spreading misinformation, abuse, and even genocide. And he features the courageous whistleblowers who exposed these platforms’ complicity.
As one caveat, Fisher approaches the topic with the assumption that recent political polarization, including Trumpism, has been a net harm for America. For anyone who agrees with that premise or can overlook it, this is my highest recommendation on the list.
[Learn More]
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
by Cal Newport
Cal Newport is one of the leading voices in living a digitally minimal lifestyle (consider his book Digital Minimalism below). Deep Work is more of a reminder of the kind of lifestyle available if we decide not to engage as much online. It’s a self-help book for the chronically distracted and a guide to standing out in your work by cultivating a lifestyle free of outside noise.
While so much of what he discusses is intuitive, I really needed these reminders when I started planning my exit. You may need them, too—especially if you’re a knowledge worker with some flexibility over your schedule (think artists, academics, programmers, etc).
[Learn More]
On the Dangers Inherent in Social Media’s Design
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
by Adam Alter
As a professor of marking and psychology at NYU, Alter focuses on decision-making and social psychology. This book addresses how screens affect both. It reveals the science and design that purposefully make technology addictive and helps readers better understand what happens to our minds every time we engage.
[Learn More]
The Social Dilemma
A wildly successful streaming film, this documentary offers the perspective of whistleblowers who were part of social media’s design. It presents a general overview of what social media currently does to our bodies and culture.
[Available on Netflix]
The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
by Tim Wu
This book uses on the history of sales to show the way marketing was hardcoded into social media from the outset. Instead of our money, however, they’re marketing to get our attention. The Attention Merchants is a great reminder of the value of our focused time—a non-renewable resource that’s under active threat.
[Learn More]
Rabbit Hole
This New York Times podcast does a deep dive into the YouTube algorithm and shows in stark detail the way the company promotes and encourages polarization. I found it extremely bingeable, personal, and effective. The information about how and why YouTube promotes certain content could, generally, also be said of the other major platforms.
[Available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify]
Practical Information on How to Leave
Off the Grid
As someone who used social media to network, promote my writing, and find new opportunities, I found this simple podcast by Amelia Hruby extremely helpful. Hruby built her career on Instagram, and as a result, knows how hard it can be to quit when you feel like your work depends on it. She offers marketing tips and advice that any business owner might find useful, with a focus on building your business off of social media.
[Available on All Podcast Platforms]
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
by Cal Newport
In describing this book, Ezra Klein said, “Newport is making a bid to be the Marie Kondo of technology.” That’s pretty accurate, as he presents a more methodical way to engage with tech and disengage when it doesn’t serve you. This is as clear a guide as you need to start the process of using digital technology with purpose and intention.
[Learn More]
Social Media Information for Parents
While I’m not a parent, I’m pretty invested in social media’s impact on children.
In fact, I’m currently producing materials for a law firm that’s suing Instagram and other social media companies for the way they brazenly allowed their platforms to introduce abusive and exploitative content to children.
We are working specifically with families of children who needed treatment because of their engagement with social media, including eating disorders and self-harm. (Contact me if you want more information on this or know someone who might).
The following resources deal both with social media specifically and screen time more generally, but all of them address social media and children/teens at some level:
Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance
by Nicholas Kardaras
While Kardaras deals with screens in general, and focuses mostly on video games and “educational” tech, the sections on social media are especially devastating.
Kardaras is an addiction expert, and Glow Kids dives into the way technology creates addiction in children, with corresponding social and emotional impact. I wish he used less alarmist and ableist language, especially around weight and disability in children. (Edited to add additional note of caution: some later chapters are exceedingly graphic and, in my personal opinion, unnecessarily so.) Kardaras’ book comes with some hefty faults, but he does make some convincing arguments against children’s access to screens.
[Learn More]
2021 Senate Hearings on Protecting Children Online
In 2019, the Senate held a committee hearing on protecting children online. Expert witnesses discussed online exploitation and sexual abuse, the platforms’ lack of self-regulation and parental control, and legislative actions that could strengthen online safety for kids. It enraged the committee members, and they spent 2021 following up with executives from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.
In the middle of this, whistleblower Frances Haugen released a massive trove of Facebook’s internal documents now known as The Facebook Papers and testified before Congress herself.
It’s hard to think of a more bipartisan topic, and you may find yourself cheering on senators you normally snub.
If you only watch/listen to one, make it Haugen’s.
[The 2021 hearing with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen]
[The 2021 hearing with executives from Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube]
[The 2021 hearing with Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri]
[The 2021 hearing with Antigone Davis, Facebook’s Global Safety Director]
Childhood 2.0
This is the most topical documentary I found specifically about childhood mental health and social media/tech. While it could go deeper, it’s a nice introduction if you’re short on time. It is ironically available on YouTube, along with other streaming sites.
[Learn More]
Additional Resources
The Digital Minimalism Subreddit
This community offers a ton of practical tips for getting offline and limiting social media. For example, I used advice from this page to set my phone to grayscale and make some apps (camera, maps, etc) exempt.
Fair warning, it’s a pretty quiet group… for obvious reasons.
[Available on Reddit]
Offline With Jon Favreau
This Crooked Media podcast covers “all the ways that our extremely online existence is shaping everything from politics and culture to how we live, work, and interact with one another.” Favreau (the commentator, not the actor) has interviewed Max Fisher (The Chaos Machine, above), Monica Lewinsky, Kara Swisher, and other critical voices about how tech intersects with our mental health, families, elections, and more.
[Available on Apple and Other Podcast Platforms]
Your Undivided Attention
From the Center for Humane Technology, this podcast explores the incredible power that technology has over our lives — and how we can use it better to build the future we want to inhabit.
It’s hosted by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin. Harris is a former Google Design Ethicist who appears in The Social Dilemma above and whose work sparked the Time Well Spent movement.
[Available on All Podcast Platforms]