2024: putting my money where my mouth is

So dating back to 2016, I remember getting to the end of the year and I found myself SO tired of the tenuous political discussion and anger that was being shot around on social media.

A society made up of algorithms, likes and comments, had started to create echo chambers that only seemed to make an intense shouting match that only served to de-humanize and villainize ‘the other.’

I wasn’t immune to it, it affected me deeply. and so I remember saying something along the lines of.

Yeah so totally, next election cycle I’m totally logging off social media in January and taking the year off.

Honestly, I thought I was relatively brilliant. Woke before woke was even a thing right?

However 2020 came and yeah we know about the mess that we found ourselves in during 2020. However, the reality is that I had found myself so addicted to the clutches of social media that I couldn’t actually take the break. I stayed in it, and again, at the end of 2020, I remember saying that there’s no way I’d be around social for 2024.

the last couple years, as social media companies have gotten increasingly good at monetizing their platforms, they’ve become more irresistible. Every idle moment we whip out our phones and quick check in on Facebook.

See who commented on that last post.

See what the DM from the cute girl said.

See who liked what.

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The last year I’ve felt like a dopamine junkie at times. I catch myself in idle moments – especially quiet nights to myself – constantly switching from one app, to another: searching for something. Something to tell to me that I’m ok. Something to tell me that I’m valuable. Something to tell me that I’m special .

Shallow right?? Well… that’s never what I’m explicitly searching for, but it’s the desperate questions hidden deep below under the other questions.

My free time, when unchecked, seems to devolve to one of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. Even in my own life, and my own experience, I’ve seen social media play into every single one of them.

I have a screen time limit on my phone for an hour a day on social media apps. And if I’m being honest with you, I see that your hour’s up buddy notification nearly every day. Often times before noon.

The last month and a half I’ve looked at the coming year and I can’t ignore the small voice inside, that it’s time to put my money where my mouth is, and log off for the year.

To regain some sanity.

To be less advertised to.

To be able to sit across the table from somebody and have a great conversation, and not be privy to what sorts of things are being screamed on the algorithms.

To find myself impulse buying less.

To find myself able to be still enough to hear that small voice of God with more consistency.

Yeah, I’ll probably be writing here more. however who knows. there’s a lot of life to live.