I deleted FB and IG from my phone two weeks ago as I wanted to give my mind a break from the incessant overstimulation. I'm loving it and my days feel longer. Only problem is that I'm a standup comedian and will need to start posting again to promote performances. I wish I could stay away from it forever!
I did too! My new year’s resolution! First I deleted FB, and then a few days later IG. I’m retired and I just don’t need social media to be in my life. I need to see real people. Or actually talk on my phone! Stay strong even when you need to go back on.
Quitting social media felt like a hard thing to do 5 years ago, because there was a mix of good and bad on the platforms. They could still be useful. The platforms themselves have made it increasingly easy to leave, though, through good ol' enshittification - even while their algorithms focus on keeping us addicted, the actual drug itself has become less and less fun.
I'm on this train atm. I just can't find the motivation to social media anymore. I've lost my desire. I still like drawing silly comics and writing silly songs, and occasionally Instagram in particular is fun for things like that, but I very much have been feeling what the heck am I even doing here on a lot of the others.
Thanks, Sarah. Yes, it can still be fun--at times! Intermittent reinforcement is so powerful! But I wish I could get the 100-200 hours (wild guess) that I spent on IG in 2024.
I was a very early un-adopter. As soon as I figured out that the algorithm was feeding me what it thought I should see, I was out of there. Never ever missed it.
I loved this. It's something I have been grappling with for a while as an author. Social media makes me unhappy. I don't want to waste my precious time in this life performing for a screen and fighting for people to click the link in my bio. On the other hand, I have been told over and over and over to promote my books on social media despite expressing many times how much it hurts my mind, body, and soul. The takeaway is that if I don't want to suffer for my art, I am not giving it a chance/I don't care about my stories. But I'm over the tortured artist thing. I love writing, but will I give up my happiness to promote my books? I can't do that anymore. And I was happy to see Colleen mentioned. I know Colleen and have been a fan of hers for over a decade. I am not going to say we are besties or that I am in her inner circle, but I consider her a friend, admire her, and have spent time with her at signings. It's because of her I was a signing author at the first and second Book Bonanza. At the author's meet and greet dinner, she walked into the room and sat with me, putting me at ease when I was alone, feeling like an imposter. She is one of the most generous authors I know. She offered over her reader group for me to do a takeover when I released my fourth novel in 2018, and I was in the Amazon top 500 after release, no doubt due to that help. She also offered for me to use her fictional publishing house from Verity in one of my books featuring a novelist. I have watched the way the internet has demonized her and torn her down. I have watched her shy away from social media and step back. It breaks my heart to see someone I know to be a good person treated in such a way. Why do we become so emboldened behind our screens to be cruel? The internet is a scary place, and I want to do a 180 as well—or at least pivot as much as possible.
I deleted Instagram from my phone and took all of December off intentionally and it was fantastic and now...I don't want to go back. Aspiring novelist here and I do feel the pressure (from myself!) to be on social media but why? Will anyone miss me if I don't return? No, probably not.
Good for you, Emma! I think we should shift the burden of proof to the other side, at this point, i.e. someone prove to me that being on social media will help a novelist's career significantly and I'll have to reconsider. Until then, why we do feel any pressure? I hope that changes for both of us.
I fully agree. For about 10 years now, I've been arguing that social media might have some beneficial effect if the author is already well known and successful, but even there I have my doubts and if someone is already successful, it's likely not worth it anyway (and thank you especially for presenting Coleen Hoover's experience).
From my own experience, I've published 7 novels that did quite well with no social media presence and very minimal promo on my part, none of which provided a positive return. I credit their success to happy coincidences and not much else. So my only advice is to keep writing and focus only on writing. Don't buy into the pressure to follow what other do. Just keep writing...
I wrote about this last week, too. Social media has felt like flinging darts at a board with my eyes closed and arm weighted for a long time. It felt like something I HAD to do if I wanted to be a serious and professional writer. All this time I also heard how social media didn’t really work but it was necessary for “engagement.” So I’ve concluded that I value my time more than potential loss of engagement. One reader responded to my Substack letter saying she imagined my readers would support me no matter what.
That was nice to hear.
I’m quiet quitting all but 10% of my social media time. That’s the best I can do for now, but as more of us creatives quit socials, the less audiences will look for us there. I hope to quit 100% at some point.
Love your flinging darts metaphor! And I agree with everything you said above, Shelley. I am interested in your "10%" plan. That's probably realistic for me, too, following my full detox, if I have to creep back on occasionally for freelance purposes.
"...as more of us creatives quit socials, the less audiences will look for us there."
I figure if I post once every 10 days…or so…that would do it. The cool thing is that once I’m off for a day, if I go back on (to Facebook, mostly) I find it more annoying. That is a disincentive for getting on there again…so a progressive improvement. Hopefully.
Very persuasive and reassuring, Andromeda, thank you. I've found the same as you: my agent and the marketing people at my publishers never talk about my using social media. And yet there's that nagging sense that unless I'm using it I'm somehow not supporting my books as fully as I might. But I really don't want to be sinking my time and attention into any of it. Substack seems to be the great exception because writing on here (and reading essays like yours) is genuinely a pleasure, therefore whether it helps sell more books or not is moot. Thanks again for the great article
Yes, social media is something I've always tried to avoid because it's always been about "control" by egotistical bastards. I mean, if folks weren't under a rock when, years ago, they learned why Facebook was created, that alone should've kept people away, but people are very tribal and their tastes, unfortunately, often resemble those tribalisms. People recoil when they learn that I've never owned a cellphone and/or not on social media. Believe it or not, a couple of years ago, I joined Facebook in order to help push a radio show of mine on our Pacifica station's Facebook page, but I didn't realize that you have to have a password to access in order to post threads (I could respond to other posts, but not post new threads). Nobody could come up with telling me how to do it and our old manager was kinda inept in some ways. Anyway, I thought I'd look around to see what old friends and family members were doing these days and I became so depressed that I just instantly left. One day on FB. It was horrifying to me.
...but I found that Mastodon was not just fun, but often had a higher number of interesting topics actually grounded in fact and not conjecture ... and that Substack was also a good place for writers who seem to be genuine and intellectually curious when it came to topics like science, the arts, and philosophical discourse. There's still that "numbers" game tho.
Thanks so much for this. I went relatively “news sober” in late October 2024. I had an inkling of how crazy things would get. I still do limited social media. I’m a writer and new to Substack so I’m trying to figure out where this fits in my life. I am ever so grateful for your analysis of how social media helps (or rather doesn’t help) authors. I’m paying attention. Thank you!
I quit all Meta social media (FB, IG, and Threads) with the beginning of the new year, in a sort of a post-election disgust mixed with a New Year's need for sanity resolution moment (I quit Twitter months ago when Musk let Trump back on the platform).
I haven't missed any of it, and really have no plans to go back at all. Some of what passed for discourse, or the social niceties associated with staying in touch with far-flung friends and colleagues in the early days, had completely disappeared. The algorithm had been feeding me crap for the last couple of years, and I was seeing less and less of my friend's content and more and more advertisements.
Two things combined to kill it for me: 1) The hostility of the conflict model they use as an intentional means to drive engagement and profit was soul deadening, and 2) the final straw was seeing ads popping in my notifications, and very little information about what my friends were doing.
I love the word shitification as it actually describes what it is that I feel all of Meta has become. For a brief moment there, I enjoyed Threads as an alternative Twitter, but even it became useless to me. The accounts are gone and the apps deleted from all my devices. Good fucking riddance!
So here I am on Substack, enjoying some real writing and some real conversations.
Our timeline is very similar and I appreciate your comments about the conflict model AND the ads, which proliferated far beyond what we saw in earlier years. Kudos on breaking away and thanks for sharing!
thanks for putting this together. i went on an off the grid therapy retreat and turned in my phone for 6 days.... and i hated getting it back. since then i've been taking long breaks for social media. as a creator it's a useful tool... but this essay is helpful in asking "how really helpful" is it.
I founded, grew, and sold one of the first-ever social media advertising agencies (McBeard). We were deep and early on every new platforms, helping big brands take advantage of major shifts of peoples’ attention. At our peak, we had 150 people dedicated to crafting clever, fun, and convincing art to share on the most popular platforms. We won awards. We ran social campaigns for over 600 movies and TV shows. We had many leather-bound books. Social media content bought the house I live in today, as I type this.
And yet, almost decade later, I am much more aligned with you here, I am keeping my own kids away from phones and social media, and even this week deleted all the apps off my phone.
I am attempting a career reinvention as a writer, speaker, and comedian (humorist?) and am battling the idea that social following is necessary for artistic success.
It’s a tough road to do something creative, no matter what, but I’m considering the fact that this social media addiction harms the very thing I want to be- connected deeply, thoughtful, dedicated, and present for the people I care about most.
Thanks, Alec, I really appreciate the comments from someone with a long history in social media and a challenging role as parent in this changing world. Good luck with your writing, speaking, and comedy career. You're probably wondering, as I am, how to stick with one's values and yet not alienate those who might publish or support us. Is it possible to stay off most of the time but post the occasional business-only thanks and reshares a few times a year? How to avoid alienating others we work with? Yes--more to chew on!
Ok I *am* still stuck on the Billie Eilish book news... But thank you for sharing these helpful perspectives! 🙏 The point about platform not equaling social media especially stood out to me, I'd love to know if you have any other posts about that I should check out!
Solidarity. For me, what I’m noticing is the same response to my leaving FB as when I quit pro writing 20 years ago: lots of support, yes, but also a lot of people who act as if my leaving is communicable, and who cut me off preemptively. They’ll admit that they’re unhappy with the algorithms and the incessant scrolling, but they got a massive response in 2010 and they’re terrified that they’ll miss out of some magical payout if they leave now or acknowledge that someone leaving might have a reason. (I’m already seeing signs of early leavetaking of TikTok, which causes the addicts to put out more, less out of assuming that there will be more views to go around for them and more out of desperation to prove that we’ll all be SO sorry for leaving when they hit it big.) Things are going to get ugly on most social media (they already ARE ugly on X), and now’s where we’re going to see who uses it in place of a life and those who want to accomplish something, ANYTHING, else.
I deleted FB and IG from my phone two weeks ago as I wanted to give my mind a break from the incessant overstimulation. I'm loving it and my days feel longer. Only problem is that I'm a standup comedian and will need to start posting again to promote performances. I wish I could stay away from it forever!
Congrats to you, Nicola! I am the same point now, loving being off but wondering how I deal with upcoming minimal promotion requirements.
I did too! My new year’s resolution! First I deleted FB, and then a few days later IG. I’m retired and I just don’t need social media to be in my life. I need to see real people. Or actually talk on my phone! Stay strong even when you need to go back on.
Thanks, Ruth!
Quitting social media felt like a hard thing to do 5 years ago, because there was a mix of good and bad on the platforms. They could still be useful. The platforms themselves have made it increasingly easy to leave, though, through good ol' enshittification - even while their algorithms focus on keeping us addicted, the actual drug itself has become less and less fun.
Staying off social media during the early pandemic must have been extra hard! You were a very early anti-adopter!
I'm on this train atm. I just can't find the motivation to social media anymore. I've lost my desire. I still like drawing silly comics and writing silly songs, and occasionally Instagram in particular is fun for things like that, but I very much have been feeling what the heck am I even doing here on a lot of the others.
Thanks, Sarah. Yes, it can still be fun--at times! Intermittent reinforcement is so powerful! But I wish I could get the 100-200 hours (wild guess) that I spent on IG in 2024.
I was a very early un-adopter. As soon as I figured out that the algorithm was feeding me what it thought I should see, I was out of there. Never ever missed it.
I’m impressed! ☺️
I loved this. It's something I have been grappling with for a while as an author. Social media makes me unhappy. I don't want to waste my precious time in this life performing for a screen and fighting for people to click the link in my bio. On the other hand, I have been told over and over and over to promote my books on social media despite expressing many times how much it hurts my mind, body, and soul. The takeaway is that if I don't want to suffer for my art, I am not giving it a chance/I don't care about my stories. But I'm over the tortured artist thing. I love writing, but will I give up my happiness to promote my books? I can't do that anymore. And I was happy to see Colleen mentioned. I know Colleen and have been a fan of hers for over a decade. I am not going to say we are besties or that I am in her inner circle, but I consider her a friend, admire her, and have spent time with her at signings. It's because of her I was a signing author at the first and second Book Bonanza. At the author's meet and greet dinner, she walked into the room and sat with me, putting me at ease when I was alone, feeling like an imposter. She is one of the most generous authors I know. She offered over her reader group for me to do a takeover when I released my fourth novel in 2018, and I was in the Amazon top 500 after release, no doubt due to that help. She also offered for me to use her fictional publishing house from Verity in one of my books featuring a novelist. I have watched the way the internet has demonized her and torn her down. I have watched her shy away from social media and step back. It breaks my heart to see someone I know to be a good person treated in such a way. Why do we become so emboldened behind our screens to be cruel? The internet is a scary place, and I want to do a 180 as well—or at least pivot as much as possible.
Thanks for sharing your stories, Jen. Nice to hear some positive stories about Colleen Hoover and I applaud you for your own 180!
I deleted Instagram from my phone and took all of December off intentionally and it was fantastic and now...I don't want to go back. Aspiring novelist here and I do feel the pressure (from myself!) to be on social media but why? Will anyone miss me if I don't return? No, probably not.
Good for you, Emma! I think we should shift the burden of proof to the other side, at this point, i.e. someone prove to me that being on social media will help a novelist's career significantly and I'll have to reconsider. Until then, why we do feel any pressure? I hope that changes for both of us.
I fully agree. For about 10 years now, I've been arguing that social media might have some beneficial effect if the author is already well known and successful, but even there I have my doubts and if someone is already successful, it's likely not worth it anyway (and thank you especially for presenting Coleen Hoover's experience).
From my own experience, I've published 7 novels that did quite well with no social media presence and very minimal promo on my part, none of which provided a positive return. I credit their success to happy coincidences and not much else. So my only advice is to keep writing and focus only on writing. Don't buy into the pressure to follow what other do. Just keep writing...
I wrote about this last week, too. Social media has felt like flinging darts at a board with my eyes closed and arm weighted for a long time. It felt like something I HAD to do if I wanted to be a serious and professional writer. All this time I also heard how social media didn’t really work but it was necessary for “engagement.” So I’ve concluded that I value my time more than potential loss of engagement. One reader responded to my Substack letter saying she imagined my readers would support me no matter what.
That was nice to hear.
I’m quiet quitting all but 10% of my social media time. That’s the best I can do for now, but as more of us creatives quit socials, the less audiences will look for us there. I hope to quit 100% at some point.
Love your flinging darts metaphor! And I agree with everything you said above, Shelley. I am interested in your "10%" plan. That's probably realistic for me, too, following my full detox, if I have to creep back on occasionally for freelance purposes.
"...as more of us creatives quit socials, the less audiences will look for us there."
Hear, hear!
I figure if I post once every 10 days…or so…that would do it. The cool thing is that once I’m off for a day, if I go back on (to Facebook, mostly) I find it more annoying. That is a disincentive for getting on there again…so a progressive improvement. Hopefully.
Very persuasive and reassuring, Andromeda, thank you. I've found the same as you: my agent and the marketing people at my publishers never talk about my using social media. And yet there's that nagging sense that unless I'm using it I'm somehow not supporting my books as fully as I might. But I really don't want to be sinking my time and attention into any of it. Substack seems to be the great exception because writing on here (and reading essays like yours) is genuinely a pleasure, therefore whether it helps sell more books or not is moot. Thanks again for the great article
Thank you, TK!
Agree. Substack newsletters are an exception. Not so much social media. More a communication vehicle.
Yes, social media is something I've always tried to avoid because it's always been about "control" by egotistical bastards. I mean, if folks weren't under a rock when, years ago, they learned why Facebook was created, that alone should've kept people away, but people are very tribal and their tastes, unfortunately, often resemble those tribalisms. People recoil when they learn that I've never owned a cellphone and/or not on social media. Believe it or not, a couple of years ago, I joined Facebook in order to help push a radio show of mine on our Pacifica station's Facebook page, but I didn't realize that you have to have a password to access in order to post threads (I could respond to other posts, but not post new threads). Nobody could come up with telling me how to do it and our old manager was kinda inept in some ways. Anyway, I thought I'd look around to see what old friends and family members were doing these days and I became so depressed that I just instantly left. One day on FB. It was horrifying to me.
...but I found that Mastodon was not just fun, but often had a higher number of interesting topics actually grounded in fact and not conjecture ... and that Substack was also a good place for writers who seem to be genuine and intellectually curious when it came to topics like science, the arts, and philosophical discourse. There's still that "numbers" game tho.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Rod!
Thanks so much for this. I went relatively “news sober” in late October 2024. I had an inkling of how crazy things would get. I still do limited social media. I’m a writer and new to Substack so I’m trying to figure out where this fits in my life. I am ever so grateful for your analysis of how social media helps (or rather doesn’t help) authors. I’m paying attention. Thank you!
“News sober.” That’s a good phrase! Thanks for reading, Steve.
Not original with me but I don’t remember where I heard it. Thanks!
I quit all Meta social media (FB, IG, and Threads) with the beginning of the new year, in a sort of a post-election disgust mixed with a New Year's need for sanity resolution moment (I quit Twitter months ago when Musk let Trump back on the platform).
I haven't missed any of it, and really have no plans to go back at all. Some of what passed for discourse, or the social niceties associated with staying in touch with far-flung friends and colleagues in the early days, had completely disappeared. The algorithm had been feeding me crap for the last couple of years, and I was seeing less and less of my friend's content and more and more advertisements.
Two things combined to kill it for me: 1) The hostility of the conflict model they use as an intentional means to drive engagement and profit was soul deadening, and 2) the final straw was seeing ads popping in my notifications, and very little information about what my friends were doing.
I love the word shitification as it actually describes what it is that I feel all of Meta has become. For a brief moment there, I enjoyed Threads as an alternative Twitter, but even it became useless to me. The accounts are gone and the apps deleted from all my devices. Good fucking riddance!
So here I am on Substack, enjoying some real writing and some real conversations.
We'll see how long it lasts!
Our timeline is very similar and I appreciate your comments about the conflict model AND the ads, which proliferated far beyond what we saw in earlier years. Kudos on breaking away and thanks for sharing!
thanks for putting this together. i went on an off the grid therapy retreat and turned in my phone for 6 days.... and i hated getting it back. since then i've been taking long breaks for social media. as a creator it's a useful tool... but this essay is helpful in asking "how really helpful" is it.
I hope you can bring what you learned during your six unplugged days into the next phase of your life. Thanks and good luck, Scott!
I founded, grew, and sold one of the first-ever social media advertising agencies (McBeard). We were deep and early on every new platforms, helping big brands take advantage of major shifts of peoples’ attention. At our peak, we had 150 people dedicated to crafting clever, fun, and convincing art to share on the most popular platforms. We won awards. We ran social campaigns for over 600 movies and TV shows. We had many leather-bound books. Social media content bought the house I live in today, as I type this.
And yet, almost decade later, I am much more aligned with you here, I am keeping my own kids away from phones and social media, and even this week deleted all the apps off my phone.
I am attempting a career reinvention as a writer, speaker, and comedian (humorist?) and am battling the idea that social following is necessary for artistic success.
It’s a tough road to do something creative, no matter what, but I’m considering the fact that this social media addiction harms the very thing I want to be- connected deeply, thoughtful, dedicated, and present for the people I care about most.
Thanks for this- lots to chew on.
Thanks, Alec, I really appreciate the comments from someone with a long history in social media and a challenging role as parent in this changing world. Good luck with your writing, speaking, and comedy career. You're probably wondering, as I am, how to stick with one's values and yet not alienate those who might publish or support us. Is it possible to stay off most of the time but post the occasional business-only thanks and reshares a few times a year? How to avoid alienating others we work with? Yes--more to chew on!
I quit social media last year and like you, was really surprised how easy it was to stay away. I don’t miss the chaos at all.
Congrats, Melinda!
Ok I *am* still stuck on the Billie Eilish book news... But thank you for sharing these helpful perspectives! 🙏 The point about platform not equaling social media especially stood out to me, I'd love to know if you have any other posts about that I should check out!
Solidarity. For me, what I’m noticing is the same response to my leaving FB as when I quit pro writing 20 years ago: lots of support, yes, but also a lot of people who act as if my leaving is communicable, and who cut me off preemptively. They’ll admit that they’re unhappy with the algorithms and the incessant scrolling, but they got a massive response in 2010 and they’re terrified that they’ll miss out of some magical payout if they leave now or acknowledge that someone leaving might have a reason. (I’m already seeing signs of early leavetaking of TikTok, which causes the addicts to put out more, less out of assuming that there will be more views to go around for them and more out of desperation to prove that we’ll all be SO sorry for leaving when they hit it big.) Things are going to get ugly on most social media (they already ARE ugly on X), and now’s where we’re going to see who uses it in place of a life and those who want to accomplish something, ANYTHING, else.
Interesting! I appreciate your comments. Thanks for the long-term view, Paul.