I’ve never been particularly fond of New Years resolutions—mostly due to the fact that people tend not to keep them. Further, they often tend to be rather superficial in nature (i.e. I won’t eat as much chocolate this year), rather than making a sincere commitment to anything particularly meaningful. For many Lutheran pastors, such resolutions are beneficial only as they serve as good sermon illustrations about how bad us sinners are at keeping our vows. That’s true enough, but there are times to make commitments rather than simply saying, “well, I’ll never be able to keep it anyway,” as an excuse not to try at all. This year, I have made a resolution to fix my relationship with social media.
As I discussed in an earlier post, the more I have thought through the nature of social media, the clearer it has become that these modes of interaction are dehumanizing. Algorithmically-determined interactions with faceless accounts makes people into bits of information, rather than presences, and thus replace human connection with a counterfeit. As I discussed in a paper I presented last year, internet relationality has caused human persons to exchange I-Thou encounters with I-It encounters (to use Martin Buber’s categories). This affects not only how we view others, but also how we view ourselves, as self-understanding is derived to a significant degree from acts of address, recognition, and response. When our primary modes of receiving such things are by means of social media, interpersonal mutual recognition of presences is lost, and we begin to view ourselves as bits of information to be liked/disliked, just as we judge other people through such lenses.
Along with all of these issues is the secondary problem that involvement in online controversies and battles is a serious distraction from what actually matters in life. As Trent Horn discussed in a recent video in which he explains why he has changed his relationship to social media, he found himself thinking about some debate he was involved in on social media at home while trying to spend time with his wife and children. I confess that the same is true in my own life. Is it really worth the mental energy?
It also is a distraction from other far more valuable work. As you may have noticed with my writing, podcasting, and YouTube content, I don’t tend to address controversies. Further, those occasional times that I do, I merely use that controversy as a springboard to talk about something more universal. This has all been purposeful, as my goal in my work has never simply been to get as many views, reads, or listens as possible (I would be doing things pretty differently if that was the case), but to produce material that will have relevance beyond my own lifetime. The mystical union will matter to Christians a century from now. Whatever current controversy Doug Wilson is involved in will not. This will not make my work the most popular, but hopefully it will make it more valuable in the long-run.
I am increasingly coming to see that time on social media is a distraction from this more important work. I have found within the last couple years that while I’m in the midst of a writing project of one kind of another, I haven’t gotten as much done as I used to. And then I realize that I have been checking Twitter every fifteen minutes. The strange thing is that I don’t feel like I’ve spent much time on the platform at all, but even those quick checks of my notifications move my mind away from what I’m doing enought to seriously slow down my flow of thought.
With all of that being said, I’m changing my behaviors. And here’s my plan.
The first thing to do is to get social media away from those constant small intervals of time when I am standing around or waiting for someone to jump on a Zoom meeting. This leads to social media being this ever-present part of life, as if its running in the background at all times no matter where I am or what I am doing. This means that I need to change my relationship to my smartphone in general.
The first thing to mention here is that I have gotten the “Minimalist Phone” app which makes a smartphone display boring, getting rid of all icons and replacing them with text. It also allows you to put time limits on specific apps, and reminders when you have been using an app for a certain amount of time. I will be deleting X from my phone entirely, along with Facebook (though not messenger). Further, I will be limiting the use of any and all apps on my phone other than phone calls, texts, maps, and weather (along with a few others) after work, rather than keeping it with me when spending time with my wife and kids. This leads to the second part of the plan.
I will be replacing much of my phone use at home with the device called the Boox Palma. I haven’t tried it yet, so I can’t yet be definitive about how well it works, but from the reviews I’ve watched/read, it seems like the perfect minimalist device. The Palma is essentially an e-reader that is the size of a smartphone (though it is a full android device). With no social media apps, I will be forced to read when I instinctively grab a device in those times of waiting around. This will hopefully stop those times where I want to sit and read, and then open some other app first without thinking, and unintentionally waste the next half hour on it. I won’t be putting facebook messenger or email apps on here either.
Since my living depends on my being online, I cannot totally disconnect from the internet. The kinds of platforms that are used for long-form content continue to be valuable, as they actually give the space to put together coherent thoughts and ideas without necessitating an immediate like/dislike. I’ll be podcasting (and on YouTube) as long as I am able, and hope to use this platform far more. In terms of other platforms, however, I’ll be changing how I do things.
Whatever I decide to do with X/Twitter, I cannot use it throughout the day. My options are either to set one specific small limited time during the day to look at it and post (or maybe even once a week to schedule posts), or to get someone else to run my account entirely. The more X deprioritizes links to other sites, the less useful it becomes anyway, as the only reason I have it is to get people to my content on other platforms. So, perhaps it’s worth deleting the whole thing, rather than taking one of these two options.
For those of you who have been struggling with these same issues (and let’s face it, most of you probably are), I encourage you to rethink your relationship to your phone and to social media as well. I’m not saying you have to do what I am doing, but it’s worth doing something. For those who have taken similar steps, I’d love to hear what worked and didn’t work for you as I begin my journey into a less digitally-connected life this year.
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