Choosing Connection (and Solitude)

guest post by Tyler Dial

Jun 06, 2024

When’s the last time you chose to spend 4 hours on social media? Did you feel refreshed and connected when you were done? It’s true that 4 hours may sound like a lot, but check your screen time. In 2022, Gallup found teenagers were spending 4.8 hours on social media per day.

We didn’t choose our obsession with social media.

That’s the essential argument that Cal Newport Technologist and Computer Science PhD makes in Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. We might have chosen to sign in and fill out our profiles, but we didn’t choose the endless bombardment of alerts, images, messages, and reels that have sucked our time, energy, and attention. Despite the promise we were sold of more connection with more friends, it feels as though we’ve degraded the quality of our relationships.

No one signed up for this loss of control. They downloaded the apps and set up accounts for good reasons, only to discover, with grim irony, that these services were undermining the very values that made them appealing in the first place: they joined Facebook to stay in touch with friends across the country, and then ended up unable to maintain an uninterrupted conversation with friends across the table.

- Cal Newport

When I signed up for Facebook in August of 2011, It was a desktop application I could maybe spend an hour on between school and basketball practice. I didn’t sign up because I thought the social network was an adequate substitute for my relationships. Along with my hopes to keep up with the cool kids at school, I genuinely hoped that it would enhance my friendships by helping me keep track of birthdays, updates, and important life events.

The landscape of social media dramatically changed when smartphones became ubiquitous, and platforms realized they could reach us at any time of the day. Now, according to my screen time statistics, I open up the Instagram mobile app over 50 times a day–and that’s after disciplining myself with app time limits, turning off notifications, and muting most of the people I follow. I didn’t sign up with that type of interruption in mind.

More importantly, despite my hopes for greater connections with the people in my life, I feel like social media has flattened so many of my relationships into double-tap likes and emoji comments. Some of my closest friends from college have gotten married and started having kids. I don’t know any details about how parenting has changed their life, and they know nothing substantial about the chronic health issues I’ve been dealing with the last few years. It’s as if we’re strangers who have read sanitized updates about each other in the local newspaper.

The data on the societal effects of social media are contested and hotly debated. Whether caused by social media or not, there is substantial data that shows that social disconnection and isolation are increasing. Dr. Bruce D. Perry, psychiatrist and neuroscience PhD, wrote with Oprah Winfrey about this trend in What Happened To You?

“Simply put, modern life provides fewer opportunities for relational interactions.”

Dr. Perry is also very concerned about the impact of screen time. He adds: “At home, at work, at school, we spend hours and hours in front of a screen–on average, over 11 hours a day. We are having far fewer family meals; our conversational skills are fading. The art of storytelling and the capacity to listen are on the decline. The result is a more self absorbed, more anxious, more depressed–and less resilient–population.” Dr. Perry isn’t just throwing out these adjectives. Along with research on rising rates of depression and anxiety, he cites research that shows how the typical college aged adult is 30 percent “less empathic” and more self absorbed than twenty years ago. One study even documented a 40 percent increase in psychopathology in American college students over the last thirty years.

These stats weren’t in the Terms and Conditions we agreed to when we signed up–not that we read those anyway. We may not have chosen all this with informed consent, but we don’t have to stay trapped in the never ending staircase of TikTok videos.

If you’re interested in taking back some control, I’d like to propose three ideas (borrowed from Cal Newport) for re-establishing habits of healthy self-regulation to improve focus, alleviate stress, deepen relationships and add meaning to our lives.

First, choose to take a break from social media.

I can’t think of a better way to do this than by joining the Ignite Summer Off Socials challenge. Cal Newport performed a voluntary experiment with 1,600 participants who committed to a “digital declutter” which typically involved going off social media and avoiding other compulsive technologies for 30 days. In describing the experience he said,

“(T)he digital declutter works. People were surprised to learn the degree to which their digital lives had become cluttered with reflexive behaviors and compulsive tics. The simple action of sweeping away this detritus and starting from scratch in crafting their digital life felt like lifting a psychological weight they didn’t know had been weighing them down.”

Remember, a break like the Summer Off Socials doesn’t mean that you can never connect on social media again. The idea is to rid yourself of any compulsive habits so that you can choose what role you want social media to play in your life when you return. Those who completed Cal’s 30 day challenge found that when they returned to social media, they were using it less frequently, but much more thoughtfully. Freeing yourself from the clutches of social media can allow you to consciously choose your social priorities and goals and then figure out just how social media can (or can’t) help you achieve them.

Second, choose to make solitude meaningful.

When was the last time you sat down and thought deeply about something for more than a few minutes? Do you ever wonder if the noise of life is crowding out personal epiphanies you could otherwise be having? The iPod and iPhone have led consecutive revolutions filling our minds with constant music, podcasts and alerts leaving us overstimulated and overwhelmed. Practicing spirituality, deep problem solving, or personal reflection all require some quiet time alone with your thoughts. These can be extremely meaningful activities that too often get placed on the back burner because of our anxiety to check for notifications and messages. Taking long walks without your phone, journaling, or practicing meditation are great ways to make solitude a meaningful and peaceful part of your life.

Another way to make the most of your alone time is to develop a new skill. For those who completed Cal’s 30 day “digital declutter” without relapsing, the most common and effective strategy was replacing the time spent on social media with a new activity. The Summer Off Socials challenge is the perfect opportunity to return to a favorite childhood pastime or dive into that thing you’ve always wanted to learn. Maybe you’ll get into reading, cooking, painting, or playing piano. I’d love to learn how to play the guitar, but this summer, my plan is to really practice writing with my time off social media. Focusing on a craft can be incredibly rewarding, and as I’ve gotten back into writing, I’ve realized just how much I’ve missed it.

Finally, choose to (really) connect.

At the risk of stating the obvious, in-person interaction satisfies an important psychological need that is frequently unmet in western culture. “I’m very concerned about the poverty of relationships in modern society.” Dr. Perry tells Oprah. “In our work, we find that the best predictor of your current mental health is your current ‘relational health,’ or connectedness.” Cultivating social connectedness can take many different forms, but here are three ideas:

Plan frequent in-person activities with your closest friends

It’s true that a break from social media will probably leave you a little out of the loop when it comes to updates and life events. But it’s important to remember that those updates probably weren’t satisfying your craving for connection with the people in your life. In-person summer activities like hikes, preparing meals, playing sports, or picnics outside are a great way to cultivate relationships with the people who are most important to you

Call (or facetime) your friends

You can also stay updated on life events through weekly or bimonthly phone calls (or better yet facetime calls) with your friends who live too far away to visit in-person.

Join a community

One of my friends recently started a music club where fifteen of us meet twice a month to discuss an album. We rotate on picking and presenting the album, but it gives the group an opportunity to meet and discuss something we love. This has been such a fun way to meet people and to connect with friends on a consistent recurring basis. Whether it’s a religious organization, a book club, a gardening group, or crossfit, joining a community will give you the opportunity to develop meaningful and long-term relationships because you repeatedly see those people in a way that doesn’t require constant organizing and planning.

Do you get to the end of the day and wonder where the time went? Do you ever feel like huge portions of your life are wrapped up in activities you never consciously chose? I think this is a subtle side-effect of the encroaching role technology and social media have played in our lives since the near-universal adoption of smartphones. It’s a phenomenon that has sucked out so much meaning and choice from the day-to-day decisions we make, and I believe that people–especially young people–are aching to take the power back. I hope that as people hear Ignite’s message and choose to accept the Summer Off Socials challenge, people will regain that lost power and live their lives intentionally. It’s time to choose a life of freedom, solitude, and real connection.

Beyond the Feed

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