This article is the second of a three-part series documenting the negative impact social media and smartphone addiction have created in my life, the temporary break I took from both, and the lessons I learned. Part 1 can be found here
What I learned in Exile
If a habit is toxic, or at least not in your best interests, quitting would be the pragmatic choice. But as I previously mentioned, one doesn’t simply walk away from Instagram. Most people would probably do well enough deleting the apps from their phones and carrying on with their lives, but I think we’ve already established I need an adult to cross the street.
My initial efforts to curb my behavior were futile. The first thing I did when my phone habits began to concern me was to impose time restrictions on the applications in my iPhone settings. Alerts would pop up when I reached my limits and I was to be a responsible, disciplined adult and abide by them. Unfortunately, Apple gives you the option of “ignoring” the restrictions for the rest of the day. Ask me how that turned…
I could not leave anything to chance. My purge needed to stick this time around. So I took it a step further and suspended my accounts on Facebook and Instagram altogether. I don’t tend to watch Youtube on my desktop so deleting it from my phone was good enough. I figured that the physical act of having to log back in and reactivate the accounts would add another layer of friction that would make me think twice about giving in. I deleted Gmail as well but gave myself permission to check correspondence twice a day because, well, I still had a business to run. I also locked my Nintendo Switch in my safe as a precaution against the potential resurrection of my obsession for Super Smash Brothers.
The first couple of days were unpleasant and strange. Muscle memory had me mindlessly and instinctively tapping my phone in places where the app icons were formerly located. I did this seven times within one hour of waking up and multiple times throughout the day.
My brain was in a perpetual fog. Concentration was elusive. There was an ambitious “to do” list ready to be conquered with all the time my newfound freedom, but I had a better chance of finding authentic, Scottish Fish’n Chips with brown sauce in Miami than crossing anything off.
My mood was unpleasant. I am a curmudgeon even in the best of times, but dammit if I wasn’t this close to yelling at the neighborhood kids for making too much noise. “This must be what withdrawal feels like,” I thought to myself. I could hear my brain screaming “what the fuck, man? I thought we had a good thing going!”
I didn’t know what to do with my time and found myself either sitting around or pacing in desperation for stimulation. I inhaled articles from the New York Times, Fstoppers, The Washington Post, etc. On the one hand, it was great that I was curating my own news cycle. On the other hand, I was flailing like a fish out of water desperate for some dopamine, aware enough to suspect that I was replacing one addiction with another in much the same way recovering drug addicts might find new obsessions in coffee or chocolate.
These effects dissipated gradually over the first two or three days. I was relieved that it didn’t take long to stop worrying about what I was missing out on. By the end of that first week, It was like I had completely forgotten that social media existed. I stopped reaching for my phone and gave zero fucks about what others were doing or saying.
I experienced a surge in productivity and mental clarity that I hadn’t felt in years. My sleep was more restful and consistent. Without a reason to have a screen glued to my face, my evening routine became a conduit for relaxation.
My anxiety levels plummeted…
What sweet relief. I’ve been dealing with anxiety my whole life, peaking with several panic attacks in my mid-twenties, and living with its oscillation of progress and retreat since. I’ve accepted it as part of the package of who I am and can manage it for the most but, but give it an inch and it’ll destroy all hope of a good night’s rest. One particularly dreadful wave deprived me of sleep for a whole month.
And sleep is crucial. We don’t prioritize it enough these days and many of us proudly swear by the “sleep when we’re dead “ mantra of productivity, present company included. I’ve often used my insomnia as an excuse to stay up all night editing photos to exceed impossible deadlines and feel like a badass for “crushing” this and that. But take it from someone who is an expert on the consequences of poor sleep: you’re only at your best when you are well-rested and you’re deluding yourself if you think otherwise. I am not just talking about performance either.
Anxiety and sleep are a chicken and egg kinda mystery in terms of who is the original sinner in the equation, but they feed off of each other and together they form a Trojan horse for our darkest thoughts and insecurities to slip inside and stab us in the heart. “Am I worth loving? Am I a fraud? Do my friends like me? Is my photography career a cosmic joke?” We might know these thoughts to be false, but as Nietzche writes “when we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago” and I can’t imagine that onslaught gets easier to endure if we’re wasting our waking life on platforms designed to strip us to our down to our bare insecurities. Being well-rested can help you “feel yourself “ more, and that can make all the difference in performance: whether you’re pushing through a workout or reassuring a prospective client that you’re worth their investment.
I read more
A lot more actually. I finished all the books that were sitting at 50% on my Kindle and picked up a few new ones. The content I consumed was more fulfilling because I was fully engaged with it. Films like 1917 and new episodes of Star Trek Discovery had my full attention and made deeper, lasting impressions. I caught on to their nuances and let them inspire me.
I was a much better driver.
Don’t get it twisted, even at my most distracted, I am an awesome driver, but not being tethered to the phone keeps the eyes on the road where they should be. I could now honk at others if they don’t move the second the light turned green without feeling like a hypocrite.
I had more energy.
I think this is self-explanatory. I was well-rested, my eyes weren’t strained by constant rays of bright, blue light, and I wasn’t sitting as much. My workouts were more focused because I wasn’t using my recovery periods as an excuse to check my phone.
My phone didn't need a 3 pm charge.
I stopped bitching about stagnant advances in battery development and stressing over how to ration my screen time until I could find a charger. Nor did I have to bother with carrying bulky battery packs. Turns out when you’re not constantly using things, they last longer.
I got shit done.
I got more work done in ten days than I had in the previous two months. Projects that were mere fantasies were now “in production.” I wrapped up a handful of long-abandoned edits and found incredible photos from trips to Scotland and Chicago that I never got around to finishing and created storyboards for new video concepts I’d like to shoot.
I shot a personal architectural photography project I had been putting off for months, which resulted in some of the best work of my career, not just in terms of quality but an evolution of my personal aesthetic. And I managed to write a blog post for it in two agonizing days ( writing will always be a chore for me) rather than “getting around to it eventually” or never finishing it. I was thrilled with its reception upon releasing it into the world.
I went out and shot so much that I was left with enough content to post consistently for a whole month upon my eventual return. By not being constantly engaged with social media, I was able to position myself in such a way that the time spent on it would be more productive and rewarding. I will be making it a habit to take monthly, “micro-breaks” from my phone when I need surges in productivity going forward.
I was more present in Therapy
That’s right: health is wealth, and that shouldn’t exclude mental health. My sessions are now over the phone because of covid, and that made it too easy for me to zone out at times by scrolling through apps while in session. Therapy is a marathon, not a sprint. Progress can be slow and at times stagnant, so I won’t mislead anyone by saying I suddenly and miraculously solved my issues. They haven’t gone anywhere. But my newfound clarity helped me connect a few dots a bit faster than normal. I held myself slightly more accountable for the habits that contribute to the thoughts and behaviors I am trying to improve. My therapist preaches awareness, and that’s much easier to do when you’re not constantly distracted.
My personal project at 1111 Lincoln Road by Herzog & De Meuron rewarded me with my most organically liked, shared, and engaged image in the history of my modest Instagram account.
It wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine.
My website’s SEO Tanked. Being disengaged from my usual, digital stomping grounds revealed just how dependent my business is on them and the breadth of their reach. I had spent the better part of the last three months optimizing my website to rank on the first page of Google for relevant keywords I was targeting. I was elated to have finally reached that goal a few weeks before my brash and impulsive decision. I fell back to page two within a week, and by the end of my trial run plummeted to page three on a few search results before I panicked and pulled the plug on the whole experiment. All my hard work was undone in less than a fraction of the time it took me to do it, all because I was no longer playing by their rules.
It turns out that a lot of the traffic to my website does come from Facebook and Instagram, and without those platforms being active, the volume of daily visitors dropped. Being on the first page for search results didn’t help as much as I’d hoped and couldn’t compensate for the loss of traffic from the social sources. Google must have assumed that my website was no longer “valuable,” which is a stake to the heart in the competitive, saturated markets of photography and video services.
What a damn shame. I was happier and more productive than I’d been in a while and had been considering extending my hiatus a bit longer. In the “Social Dilemma,” we hear about the lengths these apps go through to keep us on their platforms, and the lows they’ll sink to lure you back in if you’re gone too long. I managed to resist all temptations by eliminating the option of returning altogether. But they had one final trick up their sleeve.
I was back on page one within a couple of days of reinstating my accounts, which lends further credibility to my theory that suspending them correlated to my SEO drop. Hindsight tells me I am partially to blame here. A more effective strategy would have been to simply delete or block the apps from my phone without deactivating my accounts. This would have left my links and content still available for people to find, click on, and engage with. I just didn’t trust myself. I would have inevitably reopened the can of worms with the innocent intent of a child with hands in the cookie jar. “One little peek won’t hurt.”
Our brands are vulnerable. We’re at the mercy of so many elements beyond our control. Your ability to market your business should not depend on whether you want to participate in these applications. And yet it does. How long before they have a monopoly on marketing? Again, I am partially to blame for not doing enough to broaden my reach on other platforms, and developing my own website as a hub of content that adds value. But it’s hard for my puny Squarespace website to compete with the kind of reach these platforms have.
A policy of digital isolationism is not practical or realistic. But that doesn’t mean we’re stuck with a Kobayashi Maru “no-win” Scenario. We could all take a lesson from Captain Kirk and rig the game in our favor. Part 3 reveals the strategy I am currently using to maximize my productivity leverage the potential of Smartphone technology and social media in my favor without succumbing to its darker tendencies.
Click here for part three