Anyone who thinks "X/Twitter" isn't as bad as TikTok and Instagram is fooling themselves. The same goes for "Reddit" and "YouTube", though unmentioned.
Great line! --- "By training users to crave constant novelty and the immediate approval of anonymous audiences, these platforms slowly destroy our humanity one scroll at a time."
Text-based is so diff, I read subreddits on tropical fishkeeping to swap stories and breeding techniques, music forums to trade production tips. On Twitter I have friends the world over to discuss tech, investing etc (met 1,000s of people in person on several continents, been taken into the homes of many) - used for actual connections not "content." You are correct the "for you" tab of Twitter has devolved into this (which you can avoid via lists and staying on following). I do hear you though it is easy to use lots of these platforms poorly, I just think text-based is largely a diff type of crowd (say this as a forum user since the 90s) and image/video is the pure "consumer" not creator/community-based audience
The scene captured in your photo is a disturbing reflection of our modern reality. Today, we witness an epidemic of digital dependence, where people choose virtual connections over genuine human interaction – even when surrounded by friends and loved ones.
What strikes me most is how normalized this behavior has become. The sight of someone wearing headphones while conversing with friends once seemed jarring; now it's merely a prelude to deeper disconnection. In restaurants and cafés, I regularly observe groups of five or six people sharing a table but living in parallel digital worlds, each lost in their phone screens throughout the entire meal. Perhaps most disheartening are the couples who transform what should be intimate moments into Instagram photoshoots, trading genuine connection for social media validation.
There's something profoundly unsettling about this collective retreat into our devices. This digital escape from reality isn't just a trend – it's a fundamental shift in human interaction that should give us pause. One can only hope this phase of digital absorption proves temporary, rather than a permanent rewiring of our social fabric.
I have not had the Insta or FB apps on my phone in years. I have never had a TikTok account. I vowed when Google+ died that I was done with new social media platforms. I did move to Mastodon when I quit Twitter, but other than that I've stuck to it. I write on my blog and short form chat on Mastodon, and that is pretty much it. I maintain an IG account for a handful of friends that only use IG, but that accounts for maybe 10 minutes a week, and only from desktop.
I've gone a step further and eliminated activity trackers too. When I run I don't even bring my phone. I have an old school MP3 player for music, and a $20 Casio watch with a stopwatch feature. The gamification of exercise was ruining it for me.
yeah if you really need abyss distraction desktop is much better - you leave it there, then go about your life when you get up. it's not in your pocket constantly nagging for your attention
I always like to say social media is like a gun. It’s not the social media that is bad, but how it is used that can be bad. If used properly, it can be lifesaving.
I must be in the 1% Intellect (sarcasm). I have never had a Facebook account. Never had a TikTok account. Left Linkedin last year. Have deleted twitter this yr. HERE IS THE REAL RIDDLE...did social media companies create all these dopamine zombies? Or did the zombies create the beast?
All of this may be true, and certainly for me these platforms don't feel like home.
On the other hand, let me give you an example of how well they suit the lives of my kids.
My kids are in their twenties, all of them creatives. My eldest daughters are constantly on Instagram and Tik Tok, my son less so.
Last month they all set out to Japan to catch up with family.
But they also met up with Japanese and ex pats they had got to know through these apps.
Through Tik Tok and Instagram, my daughter Saina landed 2 DJ gigs and one gig as singer songwriter, entirely through social connections.
A handful of guys have introduced her to great people who have shown kindness and generosity to her. What was originally conceived of as a holiday has become a thoroughly entertaining and productive adventure - largely thanks to these apps.
I could go on, but suffice to say, it really comes down to how you use these apps. If they're not really feeding you and helping you grow and make real friendships and business connections, yes, I agree, you are likely to become a sort of addict to the algos they inject into your brain.
If you are using it to further your creative career and are on the creator side of the trade, it's definitely not so bad. If you're just passively consuming stuff on it that's different
What a fantastic screed. The X comment is weak, you captured the work required to wade through it - it is an compelling source of research that defies the Gell-Mann Paradox.
“So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key.” - Th Eagles, Already Gone
Whether such posts are particularly insightful or not, they fall short of what is needed. They are equivalent to pointing out how the world of speculative finance dominates our economy and is run by a handful of major institutional operators. True, but where does the solution lie?
The solution lies first in looking more deeply into the nature of the problem and how we arrived at the terrible situation in which we find ourselves. That's a more challenging task, and frankly, one that, especially to those who have never ventured into such a domain, can be overwhelming as the depth of the problems is confronted.
While it is indeed necessary to face the reality, the strength to do so must come from somewhere. It is knowing -- definitively, scientifically -- that things need not be as they are, and also how they may be changed, that offers that new perspective, without which hopelessness just increases with knowledge of the problem.
An historical overview is a way to step back from the trees to see the forest. It can show us how societies and civilizations have failed as well as how they have overcome existential problems. Combined with this must be a look beyond the "narratives" that are increasingly circulated as if they were reality, in order to find news of the tectonic global shifts currently in progress, moving most of humanity away from the failures that have been compounded over a very long time.
We have systemic problems to face and solve. And we had better do so before we lose the opportunity.
Substack is legit. Twitter is failing. I get a lot of ideas and info from Twitter. But recently the feed is stacked w violence. People just getting beat up. If I could eliminate that and improve my feed it would be much better.
I think the worst past of all of this is the long term. We’re just starting to understand what all of this quick dopamine is doing to our brains. It’s gonna be a real big problem in the next 20 years or so.
Yes, it’s all true. And I just experienced a profound shift going off social media for three weeks. I wrote about it here. I’m still kind of in shock and adjustment tbh, it’s like shedding suffocating skin
I need to write about this but TikTok is the only social media app that has made me feel better every single time I use it. Once you train your algorithm to serve you things that expand your mind, your confidence, your imagination, it can actually help you evolve and feel seen. I truly believe it’s all in how you use it. But yes Instagram is objectively awful.
Anyone who thinks "X/Twitter" isn't as bad as TikTok and Instagram is fooling themselves. The same goes for "Reddit" and "YouTube", though unmentioned.
Great line! --- "By training users to crave constant novelty and the immediate approval of anonymous audiences, these platforms slowly destroy our humanity one scroll at a time."
Text-based is so diff, I read subreddits on tropical fishkeeping to swap stories and breeding techniques, music forums to trade production tips. On Twitter I have friends the world over to discuss tech, investing etc (met 1,000s of people in person on several continents, been taken into the homes of many) - used for actual connections not "content." You are correct the "for you" tab of Twitter has devolved into this (which you can avoid via lists and staying on following). I do hear you though it is easy to use lots of these platforms poorly, I just think text-based is largely a diff type of crowd (say this as a forum user since the 90s) and image/video is the pure "consumer" not creator/community-based audience
The scene captured in your photo is a disturbing reflection of our modern reality. Today, we witness an epidemic of digital dependence, where people choose virtual connections over genuine human interaction – even when surrounded by friends and loved ones.
What strikes me most is how normalized this behavior has become. The sight of someone wearing headphones while conversing with friends once seemed jarring; now it's merely a prelude to deeper disconnection. In restaurants and cafés, I regularly observe groups of five or six people sharing a table but living in parallel digital worlds, each lost in their phone screens throughout the entire meal. Perhaps most disheartening are the couples who transform what should be intimate moments into Instagram photoshoots, trading genuine connection for social media validation.
There's something profoundly unsettling about this collective retreat into our devices. This digital escape from reality isn't just a trend – it's a fundamental shift in human interaction that should give us pause. One can only hope this phase of digital absorption proves temporary, rather than a permanent rewiring of our social fabric.
Well described. And people across all ages. I think we had already retreated into a more limited world, the tech just reflected this.
I have not had the Insta or FB apps on my phone in years. I have never had a TikTok account. I vowed when Google+ died that I was done with new social media platforms. I did move to Mastodon when I quit Twitter, but other than that I've stuck to it. I write on my blog and short form chat on Mastodon, and that is pretty much it. I maintain an IG account for a handful of friends that only use IG, but that accounts for maybe 10 minutes a week, and only from desktop.
I've gone a step further and eliminated activity trackers too. When I run I don't even bring my phone. I have an old school MP3 player for music, and a $20 Casio watch with a stopwatch feature. The gamification of exercise was ruining it for me.
Good advice to confine these apps to desktop.
yeah if you really need abyss distraction desktop is much better - you leave it there, then go about your life when you get up. it's not in your pocket constantly nagging for your attention
Do you think the gamification of exercise and things like learning languages is getting us ready for something bigger?
hah interesting comment, maybe!
Pretty much everything else is predictive programming so why would this be out on it's own?
I always like to say social media is like a gun. It’s not the social media that is bad, but how it is used that can be bad. If used properly, it can be lifesaving.
I must be in the 1% Intellect (sarcasm). I have never had a Facebook account. Never had a TikTok account. Left Linkedin last year. Have deleted twitter this yr. HERE IS THE REAL RIDDLE...did social media companies create all these dopamine zombies? Or did the zombies create the beast?
based, if you don't have to use any social media for work etc being free of it is an excellent decision
All of this may be true, and certainly for me these platforms don't feel like home.
On the other hand, let me give you an example of how well they suit the lives of my kids.
My kids are in their twenties, all of them creatives. My eldest daughters are constantly on Instagram and Tik Tok, my son less so.
Last month they all set out to Japan to catch up with family.
But they also met up with Japanese and ex pats they had got to know through these apps.
Through Tik Tok and Instagram, my daughter Saina landed 2 DJ gigs and one gig as singer songwriter, entirely through social connections.
A handful of guys have introduced her to great people who have shown kindness and generosity to her. What was originally conceived of as a holiday has become a thoroughly entertaining and productive adventure - largely thanks to these apps.
I could go on, but suffice to say, it really comes down to how you use these apps. If they're not really feeding you and helping you grow and make real friendships and business connections, yes, I agree, you are likely to become a sort of addict to the algos they inject into your brain.
If you are using it to further your creative career and are on the creator side of the trade, it's definitely not so bad. If you're just passively consuming stuff on it that's different
What a fantastic screed. The X comment is weak, you captured the work required to wade through it - it is an compelling source of research that defies the Gell-Mann Paradox.
“So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key.” - Th Eagles, Already Gone
Whether such posts are particularly insightful or not, they fall short of what is needed. They are equivalent to pointing out how the world of speculative finance dominates our economy and is run by a handful of major institutional operators. True, but where does the solution lie?
The solution lies first in looking more deeply into the nature of the problem and how we arrived at the terrible situation in which we find ourselves. That's a more challenging task, and frankly, one that, especially to those who have never ventured into such a domain, can be overwhelming as the depth of the problems is confronted.
While it is indeed necessary to face the reality, the strength to do so must come from somewhere. It is knowing -- definitively, scientifically -- that things need not be as they are, and also how they may be changed, that offers that new perspective, without which hopelessness just increases with knowledge of the problem.
An historical overview is a way to step back from the trees to see the forest. It can show us how societies and civilizations have failed as well as how they have overcome existential problems. Combined with this must be a look beyond the "narratives" that are increasingly circulated as if they were reality, in order to find news of the tectonic global shifts currently in progress, moving most of humanity away from the failures that have been compounded over a very long time.
We have systemic problems to face and solve. And we had better do so before we lose the opportunity.
Well said Philip.
Substack is legit. Twitter is failing. I get a lot of ideas and info from Twitter. But recently the feed is stacked w violence. People just getting beat up. If I could eliminate that and improve my feed it would be much better.
You have always had to curate a non-crazy experience on that site, follow everyone and start over. I still have never seen any violence on my feed.
Or even trans fat instead of the good fat from your extra large avocado your son held in the other post!
I think the worst past of all of this is the long term. We’re just starting to understand what all of this quick dopamine is doing to our brains. It’s gonna be a real big problem in the next 20 years or so.
Yes, it’s all true. And I just experienced a profound shift going off social media for three weeks. I wrote about it here. I’m still kind of in shock and adjustment tbh, it’s like shedding suffocating skin
I need to write about this but TikTok is the only social media app that has made me feel better every single time I use it. Once you train your algorithm to serve you things that expand your mind, your confidence, your imagination, it can actually help you evolve and feel seen. I truly believe it’s all in how you use it. But yes Instagram is objectively awful.