Socializing in Real Life Makes You More Productive
June 30 is National Social Media Day, and you’ll find the less time you spend on “social” media, the more you’ll get done – and likely you’ll be less stressed too. Not to mention all the time you get back in your life for what brings you joy.
Why “social” media is bad for your brain
If you’ve read my book (get your copy here!), you’ll know why I say “social” in quotes. There’s really nothing social about it.
Nor is it a technology that’s worthwhile to learn, because it doesn’t really require any skills (unlike, say, learning how to use spreadsheets or a financial planning app.) When you’re young, it makes sense to explore all the technologies available.
As you get older, it’s still important to learn the emerging technologies. Learning is good for the brain and helps stave off neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, but also helps you navigate in the modern world.
I wrote before about someone who decided in middle age not to learn how to use spreadsheets, which resulted in her losing a job. Yet, if you’re older and concerned about staying in the game, using only one (or even none) “social” media platforms won’t affect you negatively.
I’ve seen memes (on…yes…social media) about how when reading from books became popular, people said it was dangerous. Especially for women – though that was more about keeping women in line than any real belief it was worse for them.
Same with TV – watching too much of it was said to be dangerous. It’s not that great for you either, but the one thing I will say about it is at least you know you’re not being social when you watch it by yourself. (Sometimes friends or family who don’t live near each other will watch the same show and talk to each other about it, and that’s actually not a bad idea.)
The difference with “social” media is that it is expressly engineered to be addictive. Casinos have used what’s known about the variable reward system to great effect for decades. The system works so that when you do an action (like pushing a lever for food for rats, pulling a lever for money for humans) you sometimes get a reward (food or money) but sometimes you don’t, you’ll keep at it far longer than you would if you never got anything or always got something. If you always or never got a reward, at some point you’d get bored and want to do something else.
Varying the reward availability keeps you hooked. That’s why apps and “social” media want you to enable notifications, so you constantly check back to see if there’s a reward., which could be a like or comment on your post, for example, or a cute kitten video.
We’ve all gone down the rabbit hole. Especially if you’re a person interested in learning more about the world. You could get hooked on, say, a cute British man who makes short videos about history and makes them interesting. And keep watching and keep watching, and the algorithm will suggest something else that’s similar and you want to watch that.
Is it a terrible thing to learn something through “social” media? No, but you end up wasting a lot of time and being subjected to ads constantly. The facts may be interesting, but you’re limited in how you can apply them, which means they'll be hard to recall later.
Not only that, but on “social” media, there is no end to the scrolling. Even if you get to the bottom of one topic, the algorithm will suggest another one that’s interesting and so you keep going.
This is not how other media works. You can get invested in a book – maybe one about productivity even! I like to read mysteries, spy stories, and other thrillers. Which means yeah, I might miss out on sleep because it’s One! More! Chapter!
But the book will end. At that point I can come back to reality and make a choice if I want to pick up another book, or go do something else. Same with TV and movies. The show, series, or film ends. At each endpoint, you have the option of walking away and doing something else without a lot of effort. (If you’re on “social” media, it’s sometimes hard to refocus your attention.)
“Social” media is not the same thing as the internet itself. You can do plenty of things online without ever going to a “social” media platform. At the beginning, before these platforms even existed, it was thought that the internet would bring us all the information we needed to make good decisions.
Welp.
The Internet itself, like books and certain TV channels, is ad-free. The entire point of “social” media is to raise money for the shareholders or owners, which comes in the form of ads. And of course these ads can be microtargeted to you. Look at a kitty video online and you’ll be inundated with ads for cat food, new types of cat litter, kitty beds, and the like.
The algo does make egregious mistakes, so it’s not fool-proof. I’m inundated with ads for clothing for tall people, and I’m a towering five feet tall. It’s amazing how easily I can just skip past those ads!
Always bear in mind that the “social” platforms are using what they know about the brain against you. The more you see something, the more familiar it is. The more familiar it is, the more likely it is for you to buy, or at least trust the seller.
The longer you’re on the platform, the more ads you see, and the more likely you’re getting familiar with things you have no conscious desire to get familiar with.
You’re also at the mercy of the owner or originator of the platform. This is also true of the rest of the media – you can go into the bookstore and buy a book from a rightwing propaganda machine or a left wing author. But you generally know what you’re getting ahead of time.
It works the other way too: the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times were thought to be, if not leftwing, then centrist, until their owners made some very conservative choices. People weren’t getting what they thought they paid for, and they unsubscribed. (I have had a subscription to WaPo for decades and unsubscribed after Bezos told the opinion page what they were allowed to publish.)
If you’re not aware of what’s going on, or have stepped away from news for your own mental health, you might not notice (for example) that a “social” media platform has been taken over by a South African immigrant who illegally overstayed his visa. He also likes to throw Nazi salutes and has welcomed back neoNazis, rightwing terrorists, antiSemites, and the like. You will see an uptick in extremist propaganda and ads from companies that service those people.
Unsubscribing is a lot harder to do on social media, by design of course. When my WaPo subscription runs out, I won’t have access to a couple of columnists whose work I enjoy. Unless they have a newsletter I can subscribe to. I subscribe to several newsletters by journalists and writers I trust, which is how I’ll be getting my news in the future.
But on, say, Facebook, it’s taken longer to break up with it because of the design of the platform. It enabled me to connect with friends I’ve known since high school or college, and with family I don’t see often because I live far away from them. When I leave Facebook, I’ll need to ask the people I want to stay connected with for contact information. That’s not impossible, but it is a process that will take a little time.
“Social” media can also make you more stressed and less happy, though in my opinion this does depend on who you’re linked to and whose posts you see. There are some people who are always posting about how happy they are. Or posting a picture of the whole family, including the toddler, dressed in immaculate white and smiling on a beach somewhere, probably with hashtag #blessed or some other *hit like that. Constantly seeing aspirational posts and pictures can make you feel bad about yourself, even when you’re on a business site.
But you’re seeing the absolute best of their life, not what it looks like day to day. You don’t see that the toddler was screaming at the top of his lungs for half an hour before the picture was taken, or that the youngest daughter promptly threw up on Mom’s white dress a second after the camera clicked. You didn’t see the dozens of shots where someone had their eyes closed or their tongue hanging out or when they were scowling. Even though your logical mind might say, no one’s ever that happy all the time, you’re still comparing.
“Social” media isn’t social
Just because it’s got “social” in the name doesn’t make it social. (National Socialism, while it has socialism in the name, wasn’t socialist either.) Humans need some social stimulus – we survived as a species due to our ability to cooperate. It wasn’t one big tough manly dude bringing down the mammoth, it was a team of humans that did it. And teams that defended against predators.
Our brain is very good at locating where we are in a social hierarchy, because back in the day, if you were cast out of the tribe you’d probably die. So we need to be around humans in a way that the human brain recognizes.
I am an introvert, as you might know, and I still need some human input. At first, during COVID “lockdown” (compared to other countries we really weren’t locked down) I was perfectly fine with the state of affairs. Don’t have to leave the house and go “people”, YAY! Though Zoom meetings drain me too.
Anyway, toward the end, I was actually missing in-person human companionship. Those of us old enough to remember when people got together in person, not just playing video games all day or scrolling through the Internet, know how valuable it is to connect in person. Even introverts. We just need a lot more time by ourselves after socializing than extroverts or ambiverts do.
But maybe it seems social when you’re looking at your high-school friend’s avatar, reading what she’s been up to and then commenting with something fun and affirmative. However, none of that registers to your brain as being social. To your brain, you’;re looking at a picture (though the brain does like to look at pictures of familiar humans) and typing. None of that registers as a connection, and the connection is what the brain is looking for.
Zoom isn’t terrible as far as connection, but there is something about it that can be draining. It’s definitely better than “social” or email for getting in touch, especially since hearing someone’s voice tells you a lot about what’s happening with them. But it still doesn't compare to actually being in person.
Having friends means being vulnerable, which I find (and I think you’ll probably agree with me) is awfully hard to do in a Zoom meeting unless you’re already great friends with that person. But when you’re sitting next to each other at the table, it’s so much easier to really get to know them.
Socializing more in person without your schedule exploding
Socializing can also be done in conjunction with other activities. Maybe you enjoy trail running or hiking, for example. You can do these alone, but there are also tons of running and hiking groups that you can join. If you regularly join the group, you’ll get to know some people you hit it off with. That doesn’t mean you never hike or run by yourself, but you can join the group when you want to socialize.
Similarly, if you played softball or soccer or volleyball or were on a swim team, there are adult options. My local rec center offers adult softball and volleyball teams, and there’s also an adult swim team here in Long Beach. And you don’t have to be great at it.
I used to swim with an adult team when I lived in NYC, and I really enjoyed it. This team had people who had been top swimmers in college, and even someone who almost made the team for the Olympics in Nagano. (She missed it by a hundredth of a second, which I think is the most heartbreaking way to lose.)
I am not that good. I’m a competent swimmer, and when I was a kid I specialized in butterfly. (Related, in adult life I had to have rotator cuff surgery, but that's another story.) So I swam in the middle lanes, with the newer swimmers at one corner of the pool and the top ones on the other. And that was great.
Yes, there were swim meets and I went to a couple, but more for the experience than any need to come out on top. It’s nice to see your times improve as you get back into it, the way your technique probably improves when you get back into volleyball or softball, but it’s not something to get worked up about. As adults we can just enjoy what we’re doing.
Other hobbies can also offer in-person socializing. Book clubs and needlecrafts come to mind, though I’m sure there are others. My aunt loves her quilting group, and a lot of places have stitch ‘n bitch type groups. These hobbies can absolutely be done solo, but you can also bring your project or your book and do your thing with other people.
Recap (tl;dr):
For National Social Media Day, celebrate by getting off the platform and talking to someone in person. Maybe you find an activity you like to do with other people and start going regularly.
Know you need to spend less time on “social” media but having a hard time disengaging? I am here for you, my friend! Schedule a call here to discuss.
Photo by Giulia May via Unsplash.