Episode #176 Rethink Social Media

Eight Problems

• Just as those who work at McDonald’s swear they could never eat another McRib, digital media professionals often seek to distance themselves from technology.
• It can take weeks or even months of fasting in order to fully detox from our social media addiction.
• Our phone is not our friend, and our relationship with it is often distracting, unhealthy, and co-dependent.
• Even a single hour of scrolling per day equates to years of our lives.
• It is no wonder that rethinking social media is so difficult, as we are competing with hundreds of the smartest web developers in the world.
• Social media algorithms tend to elevate polarizing, shocking, and divisive content.
• We are all aware that we spend too much time on our phones, but this awareness rarely translates into lasting change.
• Half-choices can never produce the outcomes that full choices will.

Eight Principles

• We are designed to love a small group of people up close rather than several hundred people from a distance.
• The greatest gift we can give to others is our presence in this very moment in time.
• Scrolling doesn’t only affect this hour, but it affects the next hour as well.
• Most of the posts we see on social media will be forgotten by the end of the week.
• Anything worth reducing is worth eliminating.
• It takes 21 days to create a habit, and it takes 90 days to nurture a lifestyle.
• Leaving social media is costly, but staying on social media is costlier.
• Deeper connection with our friends, family, and community is well worth the sacrifice of our social media acquaintances.

Eight Practices

• Audit the space that social media occupies in your life.
• Schedule your scrolling time.
• Move any social media apps out of your friends or messaging folder and into your entertainment or finance folder.
• Consider, “What would it look like if my children never had the memory of my face lit up with the glow of a phone?”
• Allow the joy of missing out (JOMO) to surpass your fear of missing out (FOMO).
• Whenever you identify a bad habit that you’d like to reduce, consider the more radical option to walk away completely.
• Conduct a 90-day experiment by deleting all social media, and see how your life will change.
• Live a life so radically healthy that others say, “I could never do that.”