Staying off social media for a year
It was not what I hoped for, and the internet is not ultimately the problem
When my dad connected our family computer to the internet in 1992, all I saw were green letters on a black screen. He tried to explain what was so amazing about the internet: “You can find out what the weather is like in Beijing,” he said. “Or you can download The Apology of Socrates for free. The entire text!” It is still pretty cool that The Apology of Socrates is available to anyone with an internet connection, but, in 1992, I was 15 and allergic to my father’s enthusiasms. Then I found out that you could talk to people online. Actual people. I began posting to CompuServe’s student forum. I made wonderful friends, one of whom became my first love.
In the decades since, I’ve lived in a lot of places, but mostly I’ve lived online. I have millions of followers on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. Without the internet and my public presence there, my novel The Fault in Our Stars would never have become as successful as it did. I am immensely grateful for the opportunities my online life has given me and the new perspectives it has shown me. Over the past few years, I found myself looking at my phone hundreds of times per day. I was constantly checking — refreshing and refreshing, as if something truly fresh were just over the horizon.
The companies competing for our attention have built algorithms that are incredibly good at capturing and holding that attention. And at some point last year, I began to feel I could no longer effectively regulate the amount of time I spent on the social internet. So I decided to take a year off.
For my computer, I installed a Chrome extension called StayFocusd that has a “nuclear option” through which you can prevent access to certain websites. I turned off the ones that occupied most of my attention: Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and Twitter. On my phone, I used the Screen Time app to block access to web browsers, the App Store and all my attention-grabbing apps. Now, my phone still does a lot of things — it can hail rides, order food, predict the weather, check in for flights and take high-resolution photographs. Also, it’s a phone.
A month in, I am happier. Or at least less anxious. One of the weird things about social media for me is that it tends to make me feel very itchy in a way that only social media can scratch. Turning it off has mostly cured that itch. Leaving my social internet hasn’t exactly been the magical experience I’d hoped for. For one thing, I miss it more than I expected to. I miss reading funny Reddit threads on soccer. Not being able to access any websites on my phone has been very helpful for me, but I need the internet on my computer for work.
And more to the point, the internet is not ultimately the problem. My internet is the problem. For my internet to change, I need to change. There will be no simple panacea, but I am going to stay off social media for the rest of the year. I don’t know that I recommend it in general, but I think it is necessary for me. I need to discover more of what lies on the other side of boredom.
SCAN ME
Scan the QR code on the top to read the full report ■ John Green is the author of several novels, including Looking for Alaska and Turtles All the Way Down.