Leaving social media

I’m not on twitter, or any social media. I’ve cut off Netflix completely. I just keep a linkedin as a resume. This always surprises a lot of people.

I am addicted to information, boredom has always felt like knives in the brain. At the same time, I think the need for information is fundamentally built into all humans, just like the need for respect and love.

Math and science used to be a lordly pastime. Lords inherited their wealth, so knowledge had a much looser correlation with wealth back then. There was a prominent minority that did it for fun. Newton, Boyle, and Brahe dedicated vast amounts of time and money to learning, and a large part of this was because they enjoyed it.

Would these lords have gone through the effort, frustration and pain of research if they had Tiktok calling to them? Maybe some, but I’d guess a lot fewer would.

Social media gives you content like a nurse giving you a drip feed of sugar water. Super easy and enjoyable way to consume calories, but it degrades your body. It also makes broccoli taste worse. If you’re starving though, that broccoli will taste like ambrosia.

By cutting off social media, doing hard cognitive work like reading math textbooks and ML papers becomes more enjoyable. It’s very hard to do though, content is an addiction. I actually felt withdrawal, opening the Weather app multiple times a day because that’s where Instagram used to be on my phone’s home screen. I relapsed multiple times, and would overcompensate with other forms of content. I watched a good chunk of the whole Netflix library. This scared me because I didn’t realize how dependent I was, how little control I actually had over my time. Meta is worth $1.5T because they sell legalized mental cocaine.

I finally weaned off everything in September 2024. I satisfy my need to scroll through content by reading books on my phone. In 2022 I read 3 books, in 2024 I read 35.

I am also surprised by how little value social media actually added to my life. My close friends will always be close, and I hear about others through them. I am out of the loop on some culture, but I’m ok not knowing what Skibidi Toilet is. My friends just fill me in.

Since my baseline moved from brainrot to books, work doesn’t feel as tiring. I cannot stress how awesome that feels. Learning is easier today than it has ever been, and it continues to get easier. At the same time, taking shortcuts (at school, college, work) has also never been easier. Just ask Chat.

Social media usage will play a big role in growing the knowledge gap over the next decade. Since the knowledge gap is quite closely linked with the wealth gap, this doesn’t bode well.