Turn Off Social Media Until the Election

I can’t be the only one with text chains riddled with links to Twitter, YouTube and Instagram soundbiting the latest political news with catastrophic captions. I can’t be the only one who’s discovered that every time I load up Twitter, I find myself transported to D.C. or the site of the latest political kerfuffle. I can’t be the only one wondering whether—despite at least two elections proving that social media makes the body politic sick!—we’d all be better off without social media until November.

Several weeks ago, I had lunch with a friend who dared to admit what too few people confess: “I think social media’s making me an angry, anxious partisan.” He shared, with unusual honesty, that “The algorithm’s got my number.” He meant that it knows he will stop the scroll for any politically titillating post. Especially if it’s BREAKING. Especially if it’s shocking. Especially if it’s catastrophic. Or, at least, is catastrophic until the next catastrophic thing.

It’s all an emotional game. A game is played out on text threads throughout the country. Who can send the latest, most jaw-dropping video proving that the other team has lost its ever-loving mind and will, therefore, wreck the country if they win the election? It’s a game of performative outrage. There’s a dark delight in breaking the latest flub or misstep to a group of political junkies. If you want to play the game, it only accepts two kinds of tokens: anxiety and anger.

So I suggested he try a simple solution: delete Twitter. Take a month-long break. Unplug from the Matrix. See the real world, not the algorithmically crafted world around him. And remarkably, he pulled out his phone and deleted Twitter on the spot.

The Deeper Problem With Social Media News

The problem with the socialmediafication of politics runs deeper than anxiety. There is a fundamental problem of truth and credibility online. With more than one-third of Americans reporting they get most of their news from social media (and I think this number is low), the problem is a societal, national albatross. I’m not sure anyone can get it off their back.

Let me explain: On a different text chain, I noticed a friend sharing posts from a Christian Nationalist who wants people of different ethnicities to live in separate communities. To be clear, my friend wasn’t sharing those kinds of posts. In fact, he had no idea that he was signal-boosting someone who espoused such retrograde ideology. If he did, my friend never would’ve sent them. 

But that’s the real danger. As trust in mainstream media continues to plummet, we no longer know who to trust. We no longer know who has credibility and who is reliable. In an ideal world, we’d turn from unreliable mainstream sources and vet superior alternative options. But in the real world, most of us have replaced mainstream news with whatever the algorithm sees fit to put on our timeline. 

Out of context, we have no way of determining whether the person posting is trustworthy, reliable, or credible. All we get is a snippet of their thoughts. Their underlying motivations and convictions are invisible to us. But if the reason we left behind mainstream media was because their motivations/convictions were deeply suspicious, how are we any better off in this new reality? Arguably, we’re worse off. The invisibility of a poster’s pre-suppositions disarms us. We trust by default. And the truth is that we’re no better than we were before—we just don’t know it.

So here’s my radical proposal to anyone and everyone finding their emotional and intellectual life highjacked by social media: delete it. Maybe delete it until the next election. Or at least delete it for a month so you can sober up. Take all that pent-up political energy and direct it toward something local. Serve on a charity’s board. Serve in your schools. Do something for the political good of your community.

Because the truth is this: telescoping all our energy and attention to national politics (where we have little impact) distracts us from the very local needs in front of us. And those local needs are the needs we actually can impact, even if CNN or your favorite troll never take notice.