The Perks of Living Without Social Media

00:00:00.000 | Hi, I'm Cal Newport.

00:00:01.560 | Of the things I am known for,

00:00:03.440 | perhaps the most prominent is the fact

00:00:05.320 | that I have never had a social media account.

00:00:09.740 | No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram,

00:00:12.800 | no TikTok, no Snapchat.

00:00:14.520 | Now, as someone who writes about technology

00:00:19.040 | and its impact for culture,

00:00:19.920 | this has been a really big advantage for me.

00:00:22.240 | It gives me distance from the culture I'm writing about.

00:00:26.560 | I can observe with some clarity

00:00:28.520 | the impact of these tools on our lives

00:00:31.580 | without actually having to be completely overwhelmed

00:00:34.240 | by these tools myself.

00:00:35.880 | I have become convinced over the years, however,

00:00:37.760 | that there are perks to not using social media

00:00:41.640 | that are applicable to everyone,

00:00:44.520 | not just to people like me

00:00:45.840 | who write about technology for a living.

00:00:47.720 | So that's what I wanna talk about in this video,

00:00:50.000 | four perks to not using social media.

00:00:55.840 | Number one, more boredom.

00:00:59.240 | Now, this might be surprising at first,

00:01:01.480 | but follow with me here.

00:01:02.920 | One of the things that happens

00:01:03.920 | when you have these highly addictive applications

00:01:08.600 | on your phone is that your phone

00:01:10.120 | becomes a default mode of distraction.

00:01:13.760 | At the slightest hint of boredom,

00:01:15.160 | you whip this thing out

00:01:16.160 | and start scrolling through those social media apps.

00:01:18.760 | I can't blame you for doing that.

00:01:20.240 | They have been engineered

00:01:21.520 | by some of the smartest people in the world

00:01:23.400 | to be incredibly compelling.

00:01:25.420 | So why sit there in line and just be bored

00:01:28.260 | when you can have tens of billions of dollars

00:01:31.140 | worth of attention engineering at your service

00:01:34.220 | to give you that perfect moment of distraction?

00:01:36.620 | There is, however, a cost to having this perfect,

00:01:40.620 | always accessible distraction there in your pocket.

00:01:43.780 | That means there is no more boredom in your life.

00:01:46.660 | The slightest hint of boredom, you're looking at that phone.

00:01:50.020 | This can be a problem.

00:01:53.160 | So what happens when you're alone with your own thoughts?

00:01:55.580 | Because you don't use social media,

00:01:56.980 | so there is nothing on that phone

00:01:58.220 | that's all that interesting to look at.

00:02:00.100 | It's a situation I find myself in all the time.

00:02:02.260 | You're now left to just think about the world around you,

00:02:04.580 | what's going on in your head.

00:02:05.980 | That might sound scary at first,

00:02:07.700 | but it's actually critical to your development as a human.

00:02:11.420 | It is when you are alone with your own thoughts

00:02:14.180 | in the state that is known as solitude,

00:02:16.820 | that you can actually take those experiences

00:02:18.820 | you're having in your life and fit them into a framework,

00:02:21.980 | a common framework by which you understand your experience.

00:02:24.480 | It's where you can reflect on yourself,

00:02:26.920 | what's going well, what's not going well,

00:02:28.400 | what's resonating with you,

00:02:29.980 | what you're worried about in your life,

00:02:31.560 | and make progress in your identity, in your self-definition.

00:02:35.200 | It is in this time alone with our mind

00:02:37.320 | that we evolve as humans.

00:02:38.880 | And if you rob yourself of that solitude

00:02:41.120 | by always looking at that shiny, highly distracting treat

00:02:45.620 | sitting there in your pocket

00:02:46.680 | represented by the apps on that phone,

00:02:48.340 | you miss out on that solitude.

00:02:51.840 | The other advantage of the boredom you will encounter

00:02:55.540 | not having these apps on your phone

00:02:57.060 | is that it will push you to do

00:02:58.640 | higher quality leisure activities.

00:03:02.560 | You're sitting there, it's the afternoon,

00:03:04.380 | you don't have anything to look at,

00:03:05.400 | you don't have anything to watch.

00:03:06.540 | This might drive you to read,

00:03:09.380 | the exercise to pick up that new hobby,

00:03:11.980 | to go for the walk,

00:03:12.920 | to go join some sort of organization and club.

00:03:15.780 | Boredom is a very useful instinct.

00:03:18.140 | Typically when it comes to human nature,

00:03:21.100 | whenever there's a very strong or disagreeable feeling

00:03:23.940 | that is pushing us to do something that is important to us,

00:03:26.660 | we feel hunger, it feels terrible.

00:03:28.140 | Why? Because it's important that we eat.

00:03:30.360 | So what is boredom, which feels very bad,

00:03:32.180 | pushing us to do productive activity?

00:03:34.600 | The phone interrupts that push, the productive activity.

00:03:39.420 | It short circuits that instinct

00:03:41.500 | and gets you just looking at that glowing piece of glass.

00:03:43.380 | But without the phone there,

00:03:44.620 | you can actually feel through that boredom instinct

00:03:46.580 | to go do things that are actually productive,

00:03:48.580 | stuff that's good for you, for your soul,

00:03:50.220 | for your family, for your community.

00:03:51.620 | Your leisure will get better

00:03:53.300 | when you can't default to the quick fix

00:03:57.300 | of tapping on social media.

00:03:59.240 | So more productive boredom,

00:04:00.620 | that is one of the perks of not using social media.

00:04:03.340 | Another one, lower anxiety.

00:04:06.520 | Your world is what you pay attention to.

00:04:11.940 | There's way more information out there possible to consume

00:04:15.100 | than you can ever possibly actually take in.

00:04:17.580 | So your mind looks at what you have consumes

00:04:19.940 | and tries to construct

00:04:21.540 | an understanding of the world around you,

00:04:24.820 | not just a physical or visual understanding,

00:04:26.500 | but also an emotional understanding of the world as well.

00:04:29.260 | If you are living in the world of social media,

00:04:31.180 | especially on a highly combative platform like Twitter,

00:04:35.260 | the image of the world that your mind will construct

00:04:37.300 | is one of terrifying, almost unbearable strife.

00:04:42.060 | It is a world in which villains ride freely

00:04:44.980 | through the virtual town square

00:04:46.780 | and the townspeople fire at them with their revolvers.

00:04:49.760 | People dropping dead

00:04:50.820 | from this metaphorical virtual saloon window.

00:04:53.140 | It is a scary world.

00:04:54.340 | This is an upsetting world.

00:04:55.180 | It is a world of outrage.

00:04:56.860 | It is a world in which people are castigated

00:04:59.480 | at a moment's notice and criminals must be rooted out.

00:05:02.500 | It is not a happy world.

00:05:04.060 | Have you ever met, for example,

00:05:06.900 | a frequent Twitter user who was happy?

00:05:08.920 | No, why?

00:05:11.900 | Because the world that exposes your mind to

00:05:13.660 | is not a nice one.

00:05:14.500 | So if you spend a lot of time on social media,

00:05:18.220 | you're gonna be living in a world of your own construction

00:05:20.460 | that is not going to be an environment to thrive.

00:05:23.560 | Now you might say, "Well, why don't I avoid Twitter?

00:05:26.520 | I'll go, I'm over on Instagram.

00:05:27.920 | I don't wanna see the political stuff.

00:05:29.200 | I don't wanna see the fighting."

00:05:30.320 | Well, what are you gonna get on Instagram?

00:05:31.440 | Highly curated portrayals of people's lives.

00:05:34.600 | Everyone's happy.

00:05:35.600 | Everyone's in great shape.

00:05:36.720 | Everyone is doing more interesting things to you.

00:05:38.720 | That's a world where you feel inferior.

00:05:41.360 | The worlds created, again,

00:05:42.980 | when you're marinating yourself

00:05:45.240 | in these social media worlds are not good ones.

00:05:47.720 | So you're gonna be more anxious.

00:05:48.940 | You're gonna be less happy.

00:05:50.880 | When you don't have social media on your phone,

00:05:52.940 | when you don't have it on your computer,

00:05:54.040 | when you do not expose yourself to that weird,

00:05:56.520 | unnatural, highly curated,

00:05:57.960 | algorithmically optimized type of information,

00:06:00.880 | the world you see is actually

00:06:02.260 | much more the world around you.

00:06:04.240 | Your friends, the people in town,

00:06:05.640 | what you're reading in books,

00:06:07.300 | what you hear on the radio,

00:06:08.500 | what you saw on your walk home.

00:06:10.020 | It is a world that is calibrated to the human mind.

00:06:12.720 | It's the experience that we actually are expecting.

00:06:16.040 | It's a calmer world.

00:06:16.980 | It's a less anxiety producing world.

00:06:18.780 | It's a slower world.

00:06:20.200 | And all of that is much better.

00:06:22.960 | All of that is much more sustainable.

00:06:25.520 | That's the second perk.

00:06:27.240 | Third perk, privacy.

00:06:29.280 | If you're on these platforms all the time,

00:06:32.820 | you have to be generating content all the time.

00:06:35.960 | This content is going to reveal over time

00:06:38.480 | more than you probably want to actually reveal.

00:06:41.840 | It is a very unsettling position to be in as a human

00:06:46.860 | to know that there is an amorphous large crowd

00:06:50.120 | of people you mainly don't know who know a lot about you.

00:06:52.840 | And you don't even know how much it is

00:06:54.060 | that they know about you.

00:06:55.800 | It's very unsettling.

00:06:57.200 | If I was on social media as an author,

00:07:00.120 | if I had to be tweeting and doing Instagram

00:07:02.200 | and doing these types of things all the time, every day,

00:07:05.300 | post, post, post, post, post,

00:07:06.800 | I would end up revealing a lot more about myself

00:07:09.040 | than I want people to know.

00:07:09.880 | I'm actually a very private person.

00:07:11.760 | Yes, it sounds paradoxical

00:07:13.520 | because I'm in the public eye a lot.

00:07:14.920 | You're watching me on a video.

00:07:16.240 | You may have seen me on TV.

00:07:17.360 | You may have seen me on other people's podcasts

00:07:19.680 | or radio shows, but that is a very controlled environment.

00:07:21.960 | This is me sitting down and maybe producing one video

00:07:25.160 | that I want you to see that I spent just today working on.

00:07:29.280 | That's much different than having to throughout the day

00:07:31.280 | be, what do I think about this?

00:07:32.560 | What do I think about that?

00:07:33.400 | Giving takes on things, reacting to things,

00:07:35.000 | having back and forth conversations.

00:07:36.560 | That reveals too much.

00:07:38.600 | Happy to go on a radio show,

00:07:39.840 | happy to write an article and put it out there.

00:07:42.500 | Happy to think through a video and have notes on it

00:07:45.000 | and record that, fine.

00:07:46.920 | But if I have to go back and forth all day,

00:07:48.360 | give my reaction on everything, I'm gonna reveal too much.

00:07:50.360 | And I don't wanna give up that much of myself.

00:07:52.120 | And you shouldn't either.

00:07:53.480 | It is not natural.

00:07:54.440 | Human beings are wired to have

00:07:56.920 | relatively tight-knit communities

00:07:58.400 | where people know them well,

00:08:00.560 | through bounds of family

00:08:02.440 | or other types of community connection.

00:08:04.080 | You trust each other.

00:08:05.200 | They have your back.

00:08:06.080 | You have their back.

00:08:07.520 | They see your bad.

00:08:08.360 | They see your good.

00:08:09.180 | They see you at your best.

00:08:10.020 | They see you at your worst,

00:08:11.040 | but everyone trusts each other.

00:08:12.120 | Everyone's willing to sacrifice on behalf of each other

00:08:14.200 | in these small, close-knit communities.

00:08:15.920 | That is the socialization we're wired for.

00:08:17.880 | Not there's 10,000 amorphous people here

00:08:20.680 | looking at my back and forth conversations on Twitter

00:08:24.000 | trying to figure out when to pounce.

00:08:25.800 | So we do not need to be that open to that many people.

00:08:30.440 | It doesn't match our wiring.

00:08:31.840 | It can make us pretty unsettled.

00:08:34.280 | So you don't use social media,

00:08:35.360 | you don't have to worry about that.

00:08:38.600 | All right, number four,

00:08:42.020 | the fourth perk of not using social media,

00:08:44.320 | lower your sense of self-importance.

00:08:49.340 | This is one of the insidious side effects of social media

00:08:55.200 | is the degree to which it makes you feel

00:08:57.180 | as if at all times there is this vast audience

00:08:59.400 | that really cares what you have to say.

00:09:01.080 | And you get this because of the little metrics.

00:09:03.900 | You get the little thumbs up,

00:09:05.120 | you get the little hearts,

00:09:06.080 | there's little numbers on next to it

00:09:07.720 | that begin to tabulate up.

00:09:09.280 | This was retweeted.

00:09:10.200 | This was liked.

00:09:12.280 | This was shared.

00:09:13.480 | Some of these platforms will even do this

00:09:16.020 | in a blatantly manipulative manner.

00:09:19.420 | TikTok is known for example,

00:09:21.060 | to take your videos occasionally

00:09:23.180 | and show them to a much larger audience than normal

00:09:25.620 | just so you get that intermittently reinforcing burst of,

00:09:29.060 | woo, a lot of people like this one.

00:09:31.280 | So that you're gonna keep pulling

00:09:32.300 | that slot machine lever again

00:09:33.460 | to hopefully get that next burst before.

00:09:35.300 | All of this gives you a sense of

00:09:37.980 | everyone cares what I have to say.

00:09:40.540 | It inflates your ego.

00:09:42.080 | It leads you to entrench,

00:09:44.120 | to glom on to weird ideas or conspiratorial thinking

00:09:48.120 | to begin to other the people who disagree with you

00:09:50.980 | or in the other tribe.

00:09:53.240 | You feel like you are at the center

00:09:54.960 | of some sort of apocalyptic life and death battle.

00:09:58.780 | All of this is the human psyche

00:10:01.560 | being manipulated by these services.

00:10:03.720 | It is not good for us to be given daily this sense,

00:10:08.880 | this inflated sense of self-importance.

00:10:11.360 | You know, back when I wrote my book, "Deep Work",

00:10:13.760 | I had this advice that I gave to people

00:10:16.760 | who were active on social media.

00:10:18.020 | I said, "Step away for 30 days,

00:10:20.040 | but here's the key caveat, don't tell anybody.

00:10:23.980 | Step away from 30 days, don't tell anybody

00:10:26.640 | and see if anyone notices."

00:10:29.540 | And a lot of people wrote back to me

00:10:32.240 | after that book came out and said,

00:10:33.320 | "That was momentarily devastating

00:10:36.420 | because I realized in my mind,

00:10:39.320 | 'cause I see all these thumbs up,

00:10:40.620 | I see all these numbers, all these likes,

00:10:42.040 | all these retweets, I thought that there was

00:10:43.640 | this vast audience that was waiting with bated breath

00:10:46.020 | for my next missive.

00:10:47.560 | When I stopped posting for a month, no one noticed.

00:10:50.440 | No one said anything, no one cared

00:10:52.620 | because the platforms create the illusion of influence,

00:10:55.680 | the illusion of importance,

00:10:57.080 | and we should not be bathing in that context.

00:11:00.600 | Again, it pushes us to weird places.

00:11:03.480 | It's better for our sense of importance

00:11:05.360 | to come from the actual things we're doing

00:11:08.300 | in the real world with flesh and blood other humans.

00:11:11.440 | I have the respect of this person

00:11:12.720 | because over time I had been there when they needed me.

00:11:15.840 | I have the respect of these people over here

00:11:18.880 | because they've seen my work, they respect it,

00:11:21.600 | they've read it, I've talked to them, I know them well.

00:11:23.460 | I have the respect of my family

00:11:24.680 | because I've been trying to be a leader,

00:11:27.440 | a leader trying to be there for them,

00:11:29.280 | sacrifice on behalf of them."

00:11:30.760 | You get a calibrated sense of importance

00:11:33.120 | which pushes you to actually do things of real importance

00:11:35.840 | to live a more sustainable, deeper life.

00:11:38.480 | All of that, again, gets subverted and short-circuited

00:11:40.760 | when you allow these little manipulated metrics,

00:11:42.780 | these little numbers next to icons on an app on your phone,

00:11:46.600 | tell you whether you're influential or not,

00:11:48.400 | tell you whether you're important or not.

00:11:49.920 | You don't want that inflated sense of importance.

00:11:52.120 | You want a real sense of importance

00:11:54.880 | made from doing real things

00:11:56.420 | on behalf of real people that really matters.

00:11:58.800 | All right, so those are my four perks

00:12:01.600 | that I think almost anyone will benefit

00:12:03.280 | if they do not use social media,

00:12:04.980 | or at the very least,

00:12:06.360 | significantly reduce their footprint on those platforms.

00:12:11.080 | So just to review what we have here,

00:12:12.600 | you will be bored more often,

00:12:14.240 | but that boredom will lead to good things.

00:12:16.480 | Your anxiety will be lower

00:12:17.880 | because the world constructed by your mind

00:12:20.680 | is constructed from what you pay attention to.

00:12:23.420 | If you're paying attention to social media,

00:12:24.600 | that is gonna be a grim, unsettling world.

00:12:26.520 | You will have more privacy.

00:12:27.880 | Human beings are not wired

00:12:30.360 | to have amorphous large crowds of strangers

00:12:32.980 | watching you react to news

00:12:34.560 | and have interactions back and forth

00:12:36.080 | with other heated strangers.

00:12:37.280 | And finally, it will lower your sense of self-importance.

00:12:41.360 | It will push you to seek sense of importance

00:12:43.120 | in real ways and tangible ways,

00:12:44.600 | and that's ultimately better for you.

00:12:45.800 | It's better for your family.

00:12:46.800 | It's better for your community.

00:12:49.600 | So if like a lot of people,

00:12:51.400 | you're not super happy about what's happening

00:12:53.280 | on social media,

00:12:54.120 | if you're not super happy about the influence

00:12:55.600 | that social media is having on your life,

00:12:56.920 | if you're thinking about stepping away,

00:12:58.640 | let me tell you as someone who has done this,

00:13:01.240 | it's worth it.

00:13:03.320 | If you don't like what's going on there, go.

00:13:07.320 | The benefits of leaving

00:13:09.720 | might be much bigger than you at first guess.

00:13:13.240 | (upbeat music)

00:13:15.820 | (upbeat music)

The Perks of Living Without Social Media | Cal Newport

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