
How 30 days without social media changed my life - stevencorona
http://stevecorona.com/how-30-days-without-social-media-changed-my-life
======
physcab
I stopped using Facebook last November. It's been a fantastic experience.

Whether you realize it or not, FB changes your emotional health. FB used to
make me oddly depressed. Its like sitting in front of the TV and feasting on
Sour Patch Kids for two hours. I would sit there staring at how awesome
people's lives were and wonder why I wasn't doing such awesome things myself.
I heard about the passing of family members from family friends before family
members would have a chance to tell me personally.

After I stopped going to FB my important friends started CALLING me. Can you
believe that? They picked up the phone and CALLED me. I went out to dinner
more. I stopped engaging in those destructive conversations like "Can you
believe so-and-so's status message..."

There have been some drawbacks though. I don't always hear about last-minute
parties. I don't get to see the pictures my friends take from events. And I
don't have the luxury of sending a message to someone I don't quite know very
well who wouldn't have my phone number or e-mail, most likely through group
activities like Crossfit that I'm a member of.

But all things considered, ditching Facebook is highly recommended.

~~~
Swizec
I don't understand this at all.

FB (and social media in general) is the only thing I've found that enables me
to organize going out for drinks with more than 2 people at once.

Also the only thing that lets me post "Hey, anyone wanna go out for ice cream
tomorrow evening?" and actually having 5 people come. Three of which are
completely new outside twitter/facebook.

It's really quite awesome.

Hell, I have _very_ scatterbrained friends who are always busy with something.
Without twitter, facebook and irc I'd never get to talk to them at all. Let
alone be able to see them almost every other day like I do now.

And that's not even accounting for the fact that some of us tend to leave the
country for months at a time, but still wanting to keep in touch.

Seriously though, how do you usefully and efficiently keep in touch with more
than 1 person via telephone? I can't even imagine it working.

Oh and, word of advice from a "silly 24 year old". If looking at other
people's lives makes you depressed, lead an awesomer life. Friends being
better than you should be an encouragement to do better, not a depressor.

~~~
graue
When I signed up for Facebook, that was my dream. That I would post stuff like
"who wants to get ice cream tomorrow night?" and, just like that, people would
take me up on it.

Never happened.

On the contrary, people I met would "friend" me, but still keep me out of
their real-world cliques. Example: A guy invited everyone to a party at his
house. Everyone else who responded knew where he lived. I sent a message
asking. He ignored me.

I had an experience like the GP's. Facebook was an opiate, making me think I
was keeping up with friends, when it was really pointless chatter. After I
quit, I emailed an overseas friend and we had a far more meaningful exchange
than anything during the year we were connected on Facebook.

I guess it depends who you know. Most of my close, in-town friends use FB
minimally or not at all. So they weren't the same people I was talking to on
FB.

~~~
makmanalp
Well, I think this says more about your understanding of friendship versus
acquaintance rather than facebook itself.

Just because you added someone on facebook doesn't mean that you are now good
friends. It means they know you somehow. You'll get invited to people's
parties when you're close to them. Facebook supports existing friendships. It
doesn't create new ones (well, in general).

In fact, if someone you know but don't certainly like adds you on facebook,
it's socially awkward to not accept their friend request, because it is an
outward social refusal to not do so. Essentially, you can "force" your way
into friending someone. This weird social dynamic allows people's friend lists
to grow way beyond proportion even if the feeling isn't mutual for everyone.

~~~
graue
I think you're making the same point as me: "Facebook supports existing
friendships. It doesn't create new ones." That's my experience too: Facebook
did not turn my acquaintances into friends. But the person I replied to
claimed otherwise — he posted an ice cream invite and 3 people he'd never met
offline came.

------
kanamekun
This essay could also be called, "Life in the 80s (and early 90s) for most
people." Back then, you had to be relatively informed to have access to
"social media" (i.e. Usenet, gopher, BBS).

It's amazing how much productivity has been disrupted by social media. There
are of course huge upsides as well, but sometimes I wonder if the full
downside is recognized. A lot of people I know do very little work in the
workplace, as they spend all day on Twitter and Facebook. They get around IT
bans by using their smartphones... sometimes I wonder if the only thing
running corporations these days is automated software.

~~~
dhughes
I was a news hound in the 80s which was great because TV news didn't suck.

Another 80s early 90s information device was the magazine, there were tons of
magazines which were mostly killed off by the Internet.

Social media is a whole lot of everything and 1% substance on a good day. It's
a habit it's like Entertainment Tonight you sit there and one day think "why
am I watching this?". That actually happened to me in the late 80s I realized
I had a half smile grin Joker sort of thing watching banal celebrity news.
These days instead of a dumb smile it's my left elbow with osteoarthritis from
leaning on it reading about cats, rage faces and other memes or arguing with
strangers over things 5000km away.

~~~
toemetoch
Ditched my TV last week and have been cutting back on my internet habit when
I'm home for a while now. I suddenly have hours of free time every evening and
I'm re-discovering magazines. But you're right, lots of them have been under
pressure or have disappeared.

One thing I found out about myself is that internet made me lazy. These days I
find it easier to read short articles - online articles used to get bookmarked
and never read. I'm also trying harder to work on stuff without the net. I'm
in electronics/embedded and I used to click around for every little thing. Now
I sit down with pencil & paper again until I crack it by hand.

------
jmduke
This is a great blog post -- I can't help but feel like its an argument less
against social media and more about how we use social media.

I think it's particularly ironic that he singled out Reddit for providing
"absolutely 0 value to me", since Reddit's original use was a news aggregator
devoted to separating signal from noise. Nowadays, its a place for people to
spout memes.

~~~
dwc
I use reddit, but I had to unsubscribe from most of the default subreddits,
and also from a few subreddits that I'd hand picked. It's a shame, but it's
difficult to get programming news from reddit these days. Apart from silly
memes, it's sipping from a firehose. So these days I largely stick to the
backwaters where there's a much smaller amount of total content and good
signal:noise.

------
peterwwillis
I ditched Facebook, and while I miss the ease of social engagement (getting
invited to events via friend-spam was nice, since most people never invite me
personally) i'm glad for no longer needing to constantly check my feed.

However, I noticed that Twitter and Hacker News tend to replace Facebook in
that way, so I may follow your lead and ditch those too. But I sometimes find
myself in a bar, searching through the internet, trying to find something to
read rather than make conversation with a stranger. So i'm going to go one
step further and ditch my smartphone. (Protip: Google supports syncing
contacts/calendars using SyncML and S60 devices)

I'm not sure how well I will do without Google Maps and GPS to be my
Hitchiker's Guidebook, but something tells me that not knowing where your
going will lead to a more interesting destination. Or, since I live in
Baltimore, getting shot. Either way it's an adventure.

~~~
Tomis02
Baltimore, eh? Get to live your own Homicide - Life on the street moment.

------
sp332
Paul Miller, one of The Verge's editors, is taking one year off from the
Internet. He's blogging about it (via a USB stick that someone else publishes
from) <https://www.theverge.com/label/offline> It's very interesting,
especially "Ghost Limbs" and "Ignorance".

~~~
keithpeter
I've been following this, there is a hacker news thread about it, and The
Verge have published a P.O. box for Mr Miller. I'm hacking out a letter over
the weekend (typed, on onionskin paper, on my uncle's Olivetti).

I use Miller's page with teenagers (I'm a teacher); and the article here will
be added to my collection. The pitch is 'control and focus your attention'.

------
gwern
I agree short breaks are good ideas: they can give you time to mull over the
things you've learned and seen, for ideas to finally sprout, etc. But to
extend this to any broader theses like 'you should quit social media' is
unwarranted; for a counter anecdote, I'm reminded of Hamming's You and Your
Research <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>

> Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts
> about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that
> if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and
> tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow
> you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard
> work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door
> open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as
> to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the
> cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is
> symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty
> good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who
> ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed
> often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing -
> not much, but enough that they miss fame.

------
keiferski
Meanwhile, in the real world, millions of people use Facebook to keep in touch
with friends, share photos, and set up events, in addition to meeting in
person.

Defining yourself by _not_ using something is no better than defining yourself
by using it. Just let go and accept that it's a useful tool, nothing more,
nothing less.

------
hammock
I enjoyed this writeup and it's well-timed for me. I'm going to try it!

Anything you would add to the blacklist that you didn't initially?

~~~
charliepark
If 30 days is too much, we're launching a free app that lets you cut off
social media for 30 minutes at a time.

<https://monotask.com> (downloadable now)

We also have a pro version that lets you customize your whitelist and
blacklist.

We hope you use the time to make some awesome stuff!

~~~
tommi
Amazing! If you can charge 10 dollars a month for something which really
doesn't do much and for which there are many free alternatives (some even
provided by you) then I applaud. Do you have any paying customers at the
moment?

~~~
charliepark
We're just launching the pro version now. The parent post is more promotion
than just about anything we've done so far. But I'm a fan of transparency, and
would be happy to share numbers in a month or three.

------
mycodebreaks
I understand the urge to keep away from facebook or twitter. However, Hacker
News is very important resource for career and personal development IMHO.

Since I came to know about Hacker News, my life has changed. Not only I stay
away from social media such as facebook, twitter, but also I am away from news
websites such as cnn and bbc.And, let me say, it is very good for mind and
body to not consume so much news.

~~~
sigkill
My sarcasm meter is faulty. Are you being sarcastic, or genuinely serious?

~~~
mhartl
I'm confident he's serious, and I feel much the same way. I use cperciva's
Hacker News Daily (<http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/>) to help avoid
spending too much time at Hacker News and to make sure I don't miss any big
stories.

~~~
sigkill
Hey thanks for the link. It looks useful.

------
GrantCov
I ditched Facebook for about 8 months (I've been back since January) last year
and it was incredibly liberating. As a result of my complete withdrawal for
such a long period I don't check nearly as much as I previously did, although
I must admit I have been starting to slip back into old habits. Also when I
re-activated my Facebook I also joined Twitter which I now spent far too much
time on. Despite some regression, I still feel that by having taken such an
extended hiatus I am far less addicted to receiving the constant stream of
information, as I once was.

This post has inspired me to take some steps to make sure I don't completely
revert to the state I was ~1.5 years ago. I too plan to be more consciousness
of my Twitter/Facebook/Reddit usage and not just spend large chunks of time
mindlessly browsing them, when I could be doing some productive.

Great post, thanks for the reminder!

------
einhverfr
I don't really know what social media is well enough to say I would go without
it. I am simplifying it and getting off Facebook though (Strangely about a
month ago I just quit signing on-- I suppose I should announce to people that
I am no longer going to be there.)

But social media can be a larger thing. Email lists, discussion forums like
this, blogs, etc. Some of those are central to my ability to stay informed and
some are central to my actual productive work. I don't know you can separate
email lists from something like Hackers News.

So I am separating things into three piles.

1) Discard: Facebook 2) Check 1-2 times/day (HN, a few blogs) 3) Check
occasionally (LinkedIn, etc)

I haven't gotten on the Twitter bandwagon, so I don't have any experience with
that.

------
fmitchell0
(spoiler) i lived life. the end.

~~~
stevencorona
elegantly put. but it's funny how much of our lives we live with our eyes
shut.

------
100k
Last week, I tried to make producing something instead of consuming something
the first thing I did in the morning. Practically, this meant working on a
bunch of blog posts that I've had queued up for ages, plus actually writing
about those "a ha" moments you have at work. It was really great and I felt
good all day.

I was inspired by a Reddit comment I stuck in my Evernote a long time ago, but
unearthed somewhat randomly:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/pbjk1/what_are_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/pbjk1/what_are_the_small_lifestyle_changes_youve_made/c3o3ejr)

~~~
mitjak
Fascinating. I remember that comment very well, but have forgotten about it
since reading it. Thanks the reminder.

------
Paul_S
I was about to say I just spent my lifetime without social media but I had no
idea Hacker News was social media too. I guess that's good. Means I'm getting
on with the times and not living in the 80s as one commenter put it.

------
digitalzombie
Giving values and more hobbies? OP sounds like he's doing PUA's inner game
stuff.

I guess I'm a bit on the high horse since, I can do social media, and still be
able to Judo, workout (6 days a week with insanity,gym, and hiking), dance at
clubs, hang out with friends, self help stuff, and study for fun.

I don't think social media is the problem but his lack of discipline.

And everybody is jumping on the bandwagon "Whooa he's right! It's all social
media fault." Hello, what you do with your time is up to you, it's not social
media fault at all. It's your lack of time management skill.

~~~
justjimmy
Hmm… I don't think that what the author was getting at. I felt it was more
closely aligned with the point that social media put some of wall/distance
between us and our connections/relationships - in the sense that we are
assimilating stories of our friends through status updates instead of a more
personal face to face interaction. ie: Getting the news your friend is
pregnant through status update vs. them breaking the news to you face to face
and the emotions that happens as you congratulate and hug them.

------
thebigshane
I'm not sure which corporate internet filter application our building uses (I
think Sophos?) or if they use their own custom rules or subscribe else where
but, steve corona, your entire site is blocked to me as:

    
    
       Access to the web page you were trying to visit has been
       blocked in accordance with company policy. Please contact
       your system administrator if you believe this is in error.
    
       URL: stevecorona.com/how-30-days-without-social-media-changed-my-life
    
       Category: adult-and-pornography

~~~
stevencorona
Maybe it's because of my running naked blog post, haha. That sucks though, I
swear I'm not a porn site.

------
bharad
I use a plugin in firefox (my default browser) called leechblock
[<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock/>] and use a
inspirational block page with links to my personal projects.

]The beauty of this plugin lies in the ability to configure time zones. You
can say - block <insert your site here> after 1min, every six hours.

I am sure there is an equivalent in chrome.

------
cynthiaherald
Facebook, like most other social media platforms, are tools. You can use tools
to benefit or enhance your life or you can use it to destroy or negatively
affect your life. Money is a tool, for example.

Other than that though, this was a great article and I'd be interested to
start a similar experiment. I do think you if you are more purposeful with
social media, you can still be as productive and do cool things like the
writer did.

------
will_lam
Great post - I've been using RescueTime to be more mindful of how I spend my
time and curb my social media use.. Great idea to have a 30 day challenge

------
jakejake
Giving up social media for 30 days (well except for using Facebook 5 times).
That doesn't really sound like giving up social media at all.

~~~
powerslave12r
I go to facebook.com probably 5 times in less than 5 minutes. To me, that is
giving up social media. I'm sure I'm not alone.

------
pixie_
It's funny how he couldn't do any of these things before while using social
media. This is BS. I knew even before clicking the link exactly what it would
say. Incredibly cliche. Someone should write an article - Moderation. How does
it work?

~~~
rwallace
> It's funny how he couldn't do any of these things before while using social
> media.

Yes, almost as if our brains evolved in an environment where social media
didn't exist, such that social media constitute an exploit for a security
vulnerability in our motivation systems. Oh wait, they do.

> Incredibly cliche.

So is "don't take drugs". Sometimes something is a cliche because it's both
true and worth repeating.

> Moderation. How does it work?

Step one is to be lucky in the genetic lottery. Seriously, there are people
who can indefinitely maintain a moderate habit with cookies, whiskey,
cigarettes, cocaine, poker, television and Facebook; and there are people who
can't, and need to go cold turkey. As it happens I'm one of the former (well I
haven't tried it with cocaine, but I can do the others), but that doesn't make
me a better person than the people who can't, just luckier.

It's also worth noting some people have found going cold turkey for a while,
was enough to break the addiction such that they could then go back
cautiously, in moderation.

------
chj
It reminds me that Knuth was on an information diet since 90s -- no email at
all.

------
pazimzadeh
But you're the CTO at Twitpic? Do you still want your company to do well?

------
timc3
Balance and moderation. You can still use it, just not be obsessive.

------
Danll
I have yet to read an obituary (even one of a young person killed in an
accident) where FB was ever mentioned as being a hobby or passion or an
admirable part of the deceased's life.

------
giancarlofrison
when you will discover the warm water, write a blog post and you will win the
Pulitzer prize

------
drivebyacct2
Does anyone else spend like 20 seconds 5 times a day on Facebook or are we all
really only capable of none or 3 hours a day?

~~~
davegauer
Ha ha. I actually have a running joke now. I log into Facebook about once a
day with a hearty, "time to check Facebook!" About 30-40 seconds later when
I've skimmed the latest posts, I quit with a boisterous, "well, that was
great!"

I'm assuming that anyone who can spend more than ten minutes on Facebook has
way more friends than I do, and/or those friends are much more prolific than
mine.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Or more interesting. I have a small number of friends and an even smaller
number that I allow to see updates from. And even then, I rarely do more than
scroll to wherever I left off last time or lose interest before I even get
there.

I have the same reaction as you do most days. Oh well, sure glad I checked
that! (not). Google+ is actually the opposite. There is such a tech focus from
the people I follow that there are demo videos, technical papers, etc that I
want to read but don't. Certainly not this, I'm happy because other people
are, nonsense.

