A man’s spirit requires attention, maintenance, and repair, and so much of what we now do—gazing at the glow, watching and listening to other people performing and pretending, the doom‑scrolling, the constant connection to the hive mind—interferes with that maintenance. We are a nation of addicts, and our drug is constant distraction, even those of us who prefer to think ourselves beyond its reach.
I did not think that the relatively brief time I spent “checking Facebook” and other outlets was excessive. On average, Americans spend about 2½ hours a day being “notified.” American teens spend 4–5 hours. I think the numbers underestimate the impact, however, because of the constant presence, day and night, of the ubiquitous smartphone. You probably know several people who, if you send a text, use Messenger, update your status, or tag them in a post, will respond almost instantly. You may be one of those people.
So while the amount of time I spent being “connected” was considerably below the national average, I gradually began to realize that the impact on my contentment was out of proportion to that time. Facebook was sugar in my gas tank. Sand in my gearbox. A fly in my ointment.
I began to long for the time when I did not know, in intimate detail, the political opinions of friends, acquaintances, and co‑workers. Politics was not the black hole that seeks to draw all conversation into it. I knew there were strong differences of opinion, but those differences were not assumed to be a litmus test for quality of character. And we didn’t have to talk about those differences. All the time.
What social media did was to make me keenly aware of the complicated composition of a political opinion. Part of it is in brain chemistry. Education is a factor, but not in the way many people assume. You can hold many degrees and still rationalize your cognitive bias if your education failed to teach you syllogistic reasoning. A large part of political opinion is conditioning due to the information matrix and the concentration of the gatekeepers of that information into very few hands.
If you have a healthy relationship with social media, good for you. My relationship ended because of irreconcilable differences. I deactivated my Facebook account but kept Messenger because few people use email these days. WhatsApp is gone. Instagram, gone.
The impact on my time was minimal, but something changed. The first morning after, there were no withdrawal symptoms, but I felt lighter somehow. That repair project I had been putting off seemed more attractive, and I had new ideas about how to approach it. Space appeared on my worktable in the shop. I repaired that spot on the deck railing where the bear had damaged it pulling down the suet feeder. I fixed Tracey’s lamp. I learned a new recipe.
Almost two weeks out and the trend continues. It wasn’t that social media was robbing me of time, per se—it was affecting morale in a subtle way that I couldn’t detect until the effect was gone.
“But don’t you miss your friends? Don’t you miss being connected? How do you keep up with current events?”
The answer to the first two questions is a definitive “no.” My definition of “friend” and Facebook’s have always differed. To me, a friend is someone I see in person, even infrequently. A friend is someone whom I speak to in real time, from time to time. A friend is someone who sends thoughts instead of emojis. Everyone else is a pen pal at best; an acquaintance, even a “friendly” one, at worst.
What about staying up to date? There are better ways—more accurate, less biased, less time‑consuming. I use a curated list of filters my AI assistant executes which scans the headlines, checks for inaccuracies, compares differences of opinion or reporting, applies a form of syllogistic reasoning, and then creates a summary that pertains specifically to my family, our interests, and our finances, complete with links I can follow if I want to dig deeper
In other words, I traded the illusion of connection for something quieter but more real: a life in which my attention is mine again. The deck rail, the lamp, the recipe, the conversations that happen face‑to‑face or voice‑to‑voice—these are small things, but they are mine, and they repair the spirit in a way no notification ever will.
Social media will not vanish, and neither will the temptations it offers. But we are not obligated to live inside its gravity well. We can choose fewer feeds and more friendships, fewer performances and more projects, fewer arguments and more actual thought.
I left because I finally noticed the cost, and if your own gas tank feels a little sludged, your gearbox a little gritty, you might run the experiment yourself: step away, even briefly, and see what returns when the glow goes dim. You may find, as I did, that the world outside the feed is not only still there—it is better company.
Outside The Box 