What we learn when we log off

Many of us talk about quitting social media (No more doom scrolling! No more FOMO! The whole chunks of our lives we’d get back!), but few of us walk the walk, or if we do, we quickly retreat (how many times have you seen a “goodbye to all that” post from a friend, only to see them “like” one of your stories a few weeks later?). In fact, polls suggest that social media usage remains steady, if not rising for some platforms. In the United States, 63% of adults still use Facebook, almost half use Instagram, and a third now use TikTok.

Well, health writer Alexa V.S. recently unplugged and stuck with it for a full year. In “I Quit Social Media for 365 Days To Improve My Mental Health — Here’s What Happened,” she shares not only her emotional journey, but what she learned and resolved to do (you may be surprised) on the other side of her sabbatical from Instagram, LinkedIn, and X. Some of her takeaways:

• She discovered her main motivation for her social media usage was social validation. Identifying this trigger helped her stop looking for affirmation from her ambiguous network, and start cultivating it within herself.
• She replaced her habits of posting and scrolling with cultivating deeper relationships with fewer friends in real time. “This experience helped me understand that one deep relationship is worth more than 100 shallow ones, a truth the longest-running study on happiness has confirmed.”
• Perhaps surprisingly, she decided to return to social media albeit with some actionable mindful boundaries, like getting rid of Instagram’s follow suggestions and employing “thought stopping” — a cognitive behavioral therapy tool that encourages a vocal practice to say “Stop!” out loud when encountering intrusive negative thoughts or feelings.

What else we’re reading

• If you have trouble getting your head around computational thinking, check out this magical story by digital artist Nettrice Gaskins, who compares James Brown’s creative process to the development of algorithms. For example, she relates the algorithmic concept of “abstraction” to how Brown “was able to extract the most relevant information from each part of the song, which helped to define, or generalize what, exactly needed to be done to compose an entire song (through repetition or looping certain parts).”
• Writer Kathleen Murphy shared her emotional experience caring for her aging parent and revealed a surprising statistic: “Thirty-six percent of adult children polled by the National Safety Council said talking to their parents about the need to stop driving would be harder than discussing funeral plans (29 percent) or selling the family home (18 percent).”
• We’re all familiar with the fascinatingly verbose packaging on Dr. Bronner’s cleaning supplies, touting the brand’s Moral ABC — “Work hard! Prosper! Learn, grow, improve. Success is the engine that makes everything else possible” — but can you distinguish quotes from those labels versus quotes from Dr. Strangelove?

Your daily dose of practical wisdom

The next time something disappoints you, write down three reasons you’re grateful that it happened. This seemingly counterintuitive practice will help you find the positive in the negative.

Written by Carly Rose Gillis
Edited and produced by Scott Lamb, Harris Sockel, & Jon Gluck

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