What a Social Media Summer Break Reveals
REBECCA BAYUK
Rebecca Bayuk is an editor, writer and classic movies fan who is partial to poetry, animals, and kitchen discos (she continues to extend an open invitation to her two cats, despite their distinct lack of enthusiasm). She is originally from Brontë country in Yorkshire, England, but now lives with her husband just outside Washington DC. You can find her over at rebeccabayuk.com, or pootling around Instagram: @rebeccabayuk.
In June, I took a trip to a tiny cottage in the Yorkshire Dales for the express purpose of getting some writing done. For months prior, I’d dreamed of uninterrupted time, with no one and nothing to bother me, and my only concern the words I could churn out onto the page. I didn’t know when I’d have the resources or time to undertake such a retreat in the future; I was determined to make the most of it.
The cottage was chocolate-box perfect, a study in rugged Yorkshire architecture in grey stone and slate, nestled into glowering hills studded with sheep. I had two glorious days at my disposal.
My delight, however, was short-lived: the inside of my head felt like a knotted mass of fraying rope-ends. I was scared that even with the luxury of time, I’d be spectacularly unproductive, my creative self-doubt growing more malignant by the minute. In addition, since arriving back in the UK from the US, I’d been struggling to feel fully present, the fervent anticipation preceding my visit creating, inevitably, a creeping anxiety upon arrival as time remaining with loved ones diminished.
Perhaps I could’ve addressed such fears, had my head (and heart) felt less cluttered. But there was always the news. The endless, awful news, consumed frantically, constantly, and largely through the medium of shouted opinions on social media. Through the ever-urgent lens of social media, when I wasn’t busy having 24-hour-news-cycle-induced existential crises, I was comparing myself unfavorably with just about everyone who has ever lived.
The contrast between the quiet of the cottage– the only sound coming from birdsong and the odd indignant-sounding sheep’s bleat– and the constant, scratching noise inside my head was stark. It had been a particularly bleak week for news, after a particularly grim couple of years; I felt exhausted, and powerless. I looked at my laptop and my notebook, at my optimistic plans for this precious time, and felt a sudden jolt of clarity, borne simply out of bone-deep weariness, a begrudging admission that things could not continue this way, and a willingness to surrender accordingly. This endless scrolling, this constant consumption of information: it had to stop. I had to stop.
I didn’t delete social media, admittedly. But I did stop checking it, and am still largely offline, a month later.
The benefits were immediate. Time yawned open. I completed the writing tasks I’d planned for my retreat. I finished a 600-page autobiography; I went for long walks amid the beautiful surroundings of the Dales. Best of all: my brain– even on good days best described as “scratchy”– felt quieter. There were still plenty of fears floating about in there like specters, but, without the sustenance of social media, hauntings were feebler, less intrusive. I was offered moments– sometimes whole stretches– of mental reprieve. Sitting with family and friends, I felt less affected by that anxious internal monologue and more present.
With such obvious benefits, you’d think it’d be easy to incorporate lessons learned from a social media detox into our relationship with it going forwards. I’d taken a similar break a couple years back, had felt similarly inspired by what I was able to achieve in time once spent scrolling, and had been similarly delighted by how much better I felt.
It did not last. Within a week– a week– I’d merrily reverted to my old habits, which, being generally an all-or-nothing sort of person, resemble an addict’s endless grasping and amounted to hours lost to the sickly glow of a screen.
Even if you have infinitely more self-control, there’s the fact that social media is engineered to be relentlessly addictive. Nothing in its design or user interface is coincidental; every feature is a snare to trap our attention by way of gamification and bright colors, a steady dopamine-drip.
Moreover: for all its ills, social media has its positives. Living in a different country to many of my family and friends establishes an inevitable baseline loneliness, a longing for the kind of ordinary interactions previously taken for granted. Social media can help with this: I may not be able to visit my nephew often, but I can scroll through photographs my sister has taken with him this week, and when I click the like button, I can feel– even briefly– part of his world.
Social media has also allowed me to develop and deepen friendships, both with people I already knew and with others I’ve connected with because of shared interests or work. Finally, and importantly: as much relief as taking an information-cycle break offers, I know there can be no real change if we are unwilling or unable to confront reality, however bleak. If we want to better our societies, we must actively show up as members of those societies, and that means staying informed about what’s going on, and getting involved.
Is there a more balanced relationship to be had with social media? I’ll admit I’m wary, mostly because I fear my own inability to control my consumption. I’ve learned that “willpower” alone doesn’t cut it when it comes to regulating my social media use, and so I’m currently generating a set of guidelines for myself. Admittedly this feels rigid and deeply uncool, as if I’m wrangling with a willful toddler and not my own mind; given my track record, however, I’ve had to confront reality. Like a toddler, I can’t be trusted to just “stop when I’ve had enough.”
My guidelines aren’t yet finalized: I’m thinking I’ll designate a specific time and day for checking socials, that I’ll ruthlessly prune my “following” list, that I’ll limit news reportage to two or three reputable sources. Ultimately, I want to embrace social media’s positives while preserving the increased calm and focus limiting it brings. Perhaps this is the biggest lesson I have to learn in all of this: few things in life are all or nothing. Pretty much all of our experience– and all of our potential joy– falls somewhere in between.