Should You Quit Social Media?

I received a comment from @brookethechicken on my post, "Stop Lying: You Love The Kardashians" about how everyone says they should quit social media, and many do ... but that it doesn't solve their problem of being addicted to negativity.

I think there are two main negative aspects of social media.

1. Polluting your brain with negative, fear-inducing shit.

You don't need to know every single thing Trump said, or what every media outlet paid to scare you thinks about it, in that moment. Yes, important news is important. But there are not 432 important things happening every day. Yet Facebook tells you that's the case, and that you'll die if you don't click RIGHT NOW.

2. Wasting your time with instant-gratification.

Social media sites are engineered to be addicting. By highly-paid geniuses.

I've personally unfollowed a handful of negative people on Facebook. But they're the minority. Most of my feed is filled with nice things — well, mostly pictures of lovely sunsets.

There is nothing wrong with looking at your friends' lovely pictures of lovely sunsets. It's a minor positive in your life.

But combine that with social media's addictive qualities, and you're not only spending an hour looking at 632 sunsets a day, but you're interrupting your work by checking to see if a lovely sunset has popped up in the last four minutes. And ruining your ability to concentrate.

What's the solution? A social media digest would be good. Consume the sunsets in one sitting. As would breaking that addiction to checking for new sunsets — they're not going anywhere, we can see them when we're done working, talking, eating, whatever.

Social media is fine, except when it's negative, except when it's used as a crutch to keep from doing real work in real life or spending real time with real people. Really.

Of course, this is annoying advice. Everyone knows this. Yet we do it. I do it.

So what's the solution?