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The effects of deleting a social medium | |
March 06th, 2020 | |
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I recently removed the Instagram app from my phone. (pause for | |
applause). | |
This is not a statement about the evils of social media, or the | |
objectification of ketogenic foods, or whatever else you might be | |
guessing. It's about time. | |
I removed the app because of the little magnifying-glass button | |
next to the home feed. There was a tendency for me to fill my time | |
by looking at random pictures Instagram thought relevant to me. | |
This was really easy for their algorithm to game and optimize. | |
Very quickly I had an endless scroll of "neat" stuff, and that was | |
sucking up way too much of my time without any tangible reward. | |
I like my own instagram feed. Seeing photos from friends and | |
places that interest me is cool and relatively quick to consume. | |
I don't need to read much and I can "catch up" quickly in a linear | |
timeline. If there were a way to disable that little magnifier | |
icon the app would still be on my phone. | |
I've since started posting pictures on pixelfed [0]. There's not | |
much to that app except the posting of pictures, so the temptation | |
to check it at other times is gone. When I post something I give | |
the feed a quick scroll to see if anything new is there, and then | |
I'm done. Easy! | |
[0] pixelfed | |
Even so, in the days following the Instagram change I went through | |
the usual withdrawl. I ended up closing and opening mastodon again | |
several times in a row as my hands tried to fill the habit with | |
the available tools. Now several days in I'm no longer in that | |
habitual loop and I've begun reclaiming my time [1]. | |
[1] Reclaiming my time | |
The first effect is my improved patience with long-form content. | |
I've been catching up on phlogs & blogs (RSS) more readily. That | |
was unexpected but appreciated. It makes me wonder about the | |
implications too. If cutting out one small habit that involved | |
short attention-span cycling has such a major effect on my overall | |
patience, how crippled is my current state? If I cut out Mastodon | |
and even IRC, would that attention continue to grow? How fast? | |
This might warrant some experimentation. | |
Another effect is a diminishing of the value of my phone. | |
I haven't ceased using it and there are plenty of other apps that | |
hold my attention for lengthy periods. Still, the change has been | |
tangible. Again, further experimentation is needed. | |
I know this community is filled with folks who have gone through | |
similar changes. What's your experience with cutting out a social | |
platform? Has it remained cut out? Do you still see the tangibles | |
in your life, or did those fade to some sort of "rest state"? Were | |
there notable negatives? |