A Social Media Detox for the Soul

Over the last two months I've felt a noticeable decline in my mental health. I attribute this to multiple unrelated things intersecting.

• Since becoming pregnant, I've felt more isolated than ever. The activities that I normally engage in have become a struggle. While I've got more energy now, a day out with a lot of walking takes it out of me.
• My village of people is in Seattle. Even in trying to find community around Bedford, I've struggled. This hit pretty hard when Jhey went away for a business trip.
• When I'm feeling isolated, I reach for social media. Unfortunately, social media platforms seem to have gotten worse. Even Bluesky. The community I once connected with on Twitter is fractured. My feed is an endless onslaught of calls to action but no community building. Platforms have been designed to push rage bait and bad actors post rage bait with glee. I am uninspired. I find myself longing for the web of 5 years ago, and I don't know where my community has gone.
• On the note of Social Media, I manage accounts for a few open source projects at work and I can’t believe how rude and entitled people have become online. It really got me down when I was checking notifications the other day. It’s always someone behind an avatar.

These things plus what I’m sure is a flood of hormones has left me feeling rough. In the last two weeks, I seem to have hit a breaking point. I’ve been on my phone bouncing between platforms, scrolling, and could actually feel myself start to mentally degrade while scrolling. Something needed to change, and I felt like the easiest thing for me to tackle right now is the social media bit.

Small changes for maximum impact #

The first change I’ve made is leaving my phone upstairs and out of sight after work. This isn’t always possible but leaving it somewhere that is not easily accessible has been a key step in trying to break my digital dependence.

The worst bit for me is that in the evening when we’re watching TV, I get an urge to reach for my phone and scroll. Like I have trained myself to not focus on what I’m watching.

The next change I’ve made is trying to be unavailable unless it’s an emergency or time-sensitive. It’s hard sometimes because the family chat seems to start popping off around 7:00 PM my time. But not every text message needs to be responded to right away (unless it’s my husband because he’s usually asking if I want something while he’s out 😊).

And finally, identifying activities that fill my time and bring me joy instead of scrolling. I like to cook and bake and for some reason this has felt like a more strenuous activity for the last 6-9 months. I felt like I didn’t have time to do it, but I do have time. I’ve started to meal plan again and ordering groceries online has helped. (Tonight I’m making porcini ragu!)

Despite my struggles with my phone and social media, I’m still reading frequently. My goal for the year was to read 40 books. I just finished book 38. It has been such a joy to prioritize books I enjoy and has really changed how I read and what I try to read.

I hope to start blogging more and writing about web platform tech again. I’ve been experimenting with SwiftUI and Swift programming and started to build an iOS app. I am time boxing these activities though because the goal is getting away from the screen.

Finding community #

Jhey and I have some longer-term plans in the works. And I have some ideas and groups in mind I can join after the baby is here.

But overall, when it comes to my web community, I am grappling with the type of content I see being shared, seeing less authenticity and what generally feels like a fracturing of an already fractured community which can probably be attributed to layoffs and culture shifts within companies.

When every team must provide business value and contribute to the bottom line, we lose something. There needs to be room for experimentation and failure.
When events shift away from being community-oriented and become product showcases, we become further entrenched into a capitalist marketing machine devoid of authenticity and connection. We’ve lost so many wonderful small events since COVID began, and yet I’ve seen so many companies marketing their own extravagant event.

The necessity of digital detox #

For a long time, I fell into a trap of feeling like I needed to be online all the time. I needed to consume all the bad news to stay informed. This is a trap. We are not meant to consume the amount of content we do. It’s paralyzing.
The smallest act of resistance you can do right now is unplug. Do something that fills your cup up. In the end no one’s getting an award for being plugged in 24/7 and destroying their mental health. Unplug. Find your community offline and stop scrolling.