Escaping Social Media
This month I experimented with “escaping social media.” I came away with some thoughts and insights, and I want to share them here in two parts: why I did it, and how.
0x01 Why
In Weekly #9: From High Efficiency to High Burnout I wrote that “mobile internet brings more drain than anything else, and simply being online has started to feel anxious.” Looking back, I think that was imprecise. It’s not the internet itself that drains us — it’s specifically social media within the internet.
This drain shows up in three specific ways:
- Expressive ability atrophied
- Attention span stolen
- Individual identity erased
First: expressive ability atrophied.
Pay attention to the written forms that catch fire on social media — over the past few months we’ve had “Crazy Wednesday Literature,” “Puppy Literature,” “Kitty Literature,” “Unhinged Literature,” “Rat Rat Literature,” all template-driven, fill-in-the-blank formats where virtually every iteration has zero original expressive value. Living in this kind of environment, day after day, does real damage to your ability to articulate yourself, and it creates a split between your online and offline self. Online you can dash off any meme format without thinking, but offline you can’t write a coherent report with a logical flow.
In an essay called On the Inflation of Language, the author introduces the concept of “linguistic inflation” — “Currency is the medium for exchanging wealth; language is the medium for expressing thought and emotion. Just as currency inflation comes from a mismatch between money and the wealth behind it, linguistic inflation comes from a mismatch between language and the thoughts and emotions it’s supposed to convey.” When a word or phrase is used carelessly and too often, its meaning erodes. And when the meaning erodes, so does its power to carry real feeling.
Take “haha.” Once upon a time, “ha” or “haha” genuinely expressed amusement. Now, online, more “ha”s supposedly mean more emotion, and plain “haha” reads as passive-aggressive dismissal — so even when you want to write “haha,” you feel compelled to add extras to avoid seeming cold. That’s linguistic inflation in action. On social media, inflation and the erosion of expressive ability are unavoidable.
And behind linguistic inflation is a poverty of language — and a poverty of feeling.
Recommended: On the Inflation of Contemporary Language
Second: attention stolen.
Social media fragments our attention and makes sustained focus feel impossible. There is always new content, always a new notification, and for anyone without ironclad self-discipline, the impulse to check is constant. Information now arrives from so many directions. Even if you’ve never watched Kuang Biao, you somehow know who the lead actor is, what the memes are, and what scenes were cut. Even if you’ve never heard of a celebrity, if something happens to them, that news will find its way to you. But what does any of it actually matter? What value does it have for my actual life?
One of the primary reasons social media took hold is that it snapped the connection between the effort required to create something of real value and the amount of attention it received. Instead, it replaced the timeless trade of capitalism with a shallow collectivist exchange: if you pay attention to what I say, I’ll pay attention to what you say, regardless of whether either of us has anything worth saying. — Deep Work, Cal Newport
Too much information creates information overload — the brain’s capacity gets packed with a constant churn of meaningless updates, which is itself draining. Beyond that, exposure to an unending stream of social noise desensitizes you. Your threshold rises. You stop reacting to smaller things and find yourself craving bigger and bigger “tea” to satisfy the curiosity itch that social media has cultivated.
Third: individual identity erased.
The internet has become our spiritual home and our medium of connection with the world. We live in a “connected society,” where the relationships between people — and between people and things — are now mediated and replaced by “connectivity.” But in this vast network, every unique, multidimensional person is reduced to a thin, abstract node that sends and receives. Individual identity is swallowed up in the ocean of social media. Almost no one quietly contemplates the inner life of some anonymous stranger in a corner of the internet; the steady traffic of emotionless attention is mostly harvested to fuel promotional content. A network like that isn’t worth staying in.
0x02 How
I tried a few approaches to escape this dynamic. Here are the ones I found genuinely workable.
Method 1: Shift from passive consumption to active seeking.
Most of what arrives passively is noise, or content that an algorithm decided you should see. The core move is to flip from passive to active: use RSS to subscribe to newsletters, blogs, email lists, websites, forums, Weibo accounts, and public accounts that you actually care about. Set aside 1–2 fixed windows per day to actively scan what’s there, and only read what you’ve chosen to follow. Maintain your own “input rhythm.” We should be using the internet — not being used by it.
Beyond that, actively reduce the time you spend “in contact with social media.” Close the Moments feed, turn off WeChat notifications, move WeChat off your home screen. If you genuinely care about a friend, you should choose to go visit their Moments — not wait until their post happens to float up in your feed. The same logic applies to notifications: if someone needs to reach you, they’ll find a way.
Method 2: Write emails instead of chatting.
Replacing quick messages with longer emails is a surprisingly good practice. It forces you to slow down, consolidate your thoughts, and exercise your expressive range — returning your attention to language itself, giving words and feelings their proper texture. Writing a letter also has a certain weight and formality to it, which adds a pleasant sense of ritual to daily life.
Method 3: Set aside time for yourself every day.
Every day I block out time just for myself — about half an hour at noon and another half at night. During this time, no interruptions, no incoming messages; I focus entirely on whatever I want to do: reading, or working on something I care about. This has been invaluable for building sustained focus and making it easier to enter a flow state.
This Month’s Log
January was genuinely full. I brought my family to Shenzhen to celebrate New Year’s together, used the holiday to do a fairly systematic deep dive into compiler theory (filling some gaps in my foundations), and got to put some of that knowledge to work through a project using Babylon. I settled in to read, exchanged letters with friends, went to see Man Jiang Hong with family at midnight, dug out my PC and an Xbox Elite controller to finally play Red Dead Redemption 2 — which I’d been wanting to play for ages. Probably the best January I’ve ever had.
- Finished: Philosophy | Siddhartha | ★★★★★
- Reading: Novel | Young Babylon | ★★★★★
- Watched: Film | Man Jiang Hong | ★★★★☆
- Finished: Anime | Spy × Family | ★★★★★
- Watching: J-Drama | Nagi’s Long Vacation | ★★★★☆
- Watching: Drama | Three-Body | ★★★★★
- Watching: Anime | Chinese Strange Tales | ★★★★★
- Playing: Switch | Persona 5 Royal | ★★★★★
- Playing: Steam | Red Dead Redemption 2 | ★★★★★
- Playing: PS4 | It Takes Two | ★★★★☆
