Is Social Media making you a boring person?

Life in a screen.

I was surfing Instagram this morning. My feed looks something like this:

Golfers are telling me how to break 90.

Smoothie recipes.

Curb Your Enthusiasm clips.

Thirst traps.

Did you know that Logic Pro could do this?

The best films of the year so far, as told by a random, questionable guy.

“I’m a middle-aged dude playing guitar.”

Trump sucks.

So-called advertising and branding genius imparts his so-called genius.

For a while, I was getting “I captured a snake under my garage” videos.  

I’m unsure how much time elapses while surfing these and other things on my feed. It seems the world could stop and I could look up to witness the scorched earth destruction and think, “When did that happen?” Surfing social media Is almost like a dream state, where time is lost, brain cells are lost, and very little real value is gained. 

Distracting myself for a while by opening up TikTok and watching a guy do some landscaping is ridiculous, and surprisingly enthralling.

In other words, while surfing, I am not bored. My right thumb flicks up every few seconds. I can't wait to see what the algorithm shows me next. If Taylor Swift comes up I swipe extra quickly for fear that the algorithm will start to think I enjoy her music, or her life, or her anything.

Millions are doing the same thing. People are hypnotized by whatever their phones show them, and they do little except look at their screens. It’s like a vast vintage sci-fi movie where people are mesmerized by a mysterious light, drawn toward it, only to be lured into an abyss to their death. 

To people who regularly and obsessively surf social media, the outside world exists inside a tiny device. People have become so compelled by things like TikTok that hand surgeons are even seeing a rise in something called “texting thumb” – an ailment caused by scrolling on your phone.

But forget the thumb. What about the brain?

I recently heard Scott Galloway, famous podcaster and branding genius talk about his upbringing, which mirrored mine, which included riding bikes around the neighborhood, playing pickup games, and generally horsing around until it was time for dinner. We experienced shit. We got our brains beat out. We got picked on. But we learned a lot.

And none of it was on YouTube. TikTok was not a distraction.

The only real distraction we had was the baseball card price guide, which kind of ruined trading baseball cards for us. Butt that’s an article for another time.

Is this middle-aged grousing? Maybe. I love YouTube and have often consulted it for video game tips, how to EQ an electric guitar, or a Tiny Desk Concert. 

But I know what the real world looks like. And I know that just before the suburban Mom took that picture of the glass of wine on her kitchen table and wrote a status update saying something like “life goals accomplished” it was preceded by her complaining about the sorry state of her neighbor's yard or getting in a fight with her spouse about money or throwing her iPad at her kid and saying, “here, amuse yourself.”

But hey, her “friends” love it.

I’m at an advantage. I am not a digital native. I remember the cords tethered to phones. But for 16-year-olds, spending a Saturday night at home huddled around a screen surfing video content seems to have been normalized. Now, instead of your phone being tethered to a wall, it is now tethered to your malleable, vulnerable brain. The real world exists in the square foot of space you are taking up. where real experiences and real human interactions and being influenced by influencers somehow pass for a meaningful existence.

Speaking of influencers, a study reported that over 50% of high schoolers said they would become an influencer if offered the opportunity. It’s a strange thing to say, considering that opportunity is available to them 24-7. Adults throw their arms up in the air when hearing a stat like this, wondering if kids know how vapid and empty an influencer’s existence would be. Kids should consider chasing a more meaningful path, like becoming a nurse, or a lawyer, or an investment professional at Goldman Sachs where they can meet their spouse have a bunch of kids and have a lake house and a pontoon boat where they can serve Bacardi and Diet Cokes.

But here is the thing people get wrong about influencers: when you scrape away the hot Florida blonde talking about what she had for breakfast or the sweater over-shoulders guy with the accent showing us around Paris, you realize that an overwhelming amount of influencers are experts in something. Instead of shilling a soft drink, they have expertise that people are interested in - -politics, science, film, art. They are schooled and have inside knowledge that people want to hear. 

In other words, great influencers have some kind of education or deep experience that allows them to influence. So, if you want to be an influencer, you need to learn something, or have a profound experience, and then share your knowledge.

You also can’t be boring.

The fact is most kids won’t become influencers because their faces are in their phones. And their lack of boredom somehow justifies the act of doing nothing. And frankly, the thought of creating a new piece of riveting content every day just feels too much like hard work. Who wants to do that?

Staring at online content has a way of making you think you are part of something exciting. You’re not bored. You feel like you are in the know. You have friends, albeit fake ones. The depth of your knowledge lies on the surface; millions of miles away from critical thought. Your entire existence can not come from a social media feed, and if it does, you’re being severely damaged by an illusion of reality.

You’re stuck comparing your life to the facsimile of someone else’s life. And as we all know, comparison is the thief of joy. That “life” you are comparing yours to is not someone’s real “life” - it’s a carefully curated version of their life. 

Hence the glass of wine photo.

I’m fine with the “Have you seen this on TikTok? question –  but if it’s all you’ve got you probably need to get out more. You’re a boring person. 

New rule: For every minute you’re on social media, you should be required to spend 5 minutes attempting to solve the New York Times Crossword Puzzle.