The past two years - I’ve been taking a intentionally proactive stance to reduce my social media consumption.

And I feel a lot better for it.

This is in contrast to 2024. I quit my previous role as an Engineering Manager at https://rapha.cc and went to the cycling mecca Girona, to send some time disconnected, ride my bike, and let my thoughts run away with themselves.

GPT 3.5 was out and running amock and it felt like a solid time to learn about transformers, AI, and think about what I wanted to next.

A mental detox was in order alongside the idea to disconnect slightly after giving a lot to a role over a 5 year period - and I was really looking forward to it.

I felt like I had not had time to truly switch off in years. I longed to have a period where I could decide spontaneously what I wanted to do that day, to hear the birds chirp around me, to like my curiousity wander.

Those moments your senses come into focus and you watch a sunset without much. What a position of privlidge. Truly.

But the first week - I spent an accumilation of 20 hours scrolling social media content. I didn’t want to be on Instagram, and truth be told - sometimes I didn’t know I was. I would look up after eating and realise it was nearly dark. Time was flying. Panic.

That was the last thing I had envsioned doing with my privlidged freedom.

In that moment it really dawned on me just how little self control I had when it came to social media platforms.

But we get told that willpower is enough, that we can just put it down, that it’s a choice. All we have to do is block it or have another application tell us that we spent less time on that app last week (yay). We set ourselves limits but never think about the accumilation.

And there’s an element of being vulnerable with it. Honest. It’s not a failure, nor a dirty word.

I do not have the willpower to manage my own social media consumption.

And that’s okay! These platforms have millions of $$$ invested in them. Often over decades. Teams of people. Petabytes of data. Unapologetically businesses. How are you going to expect to?

So I blocked everything I could. I started with an application, and started having time break down. The biggest finding was the muscle memory. The triggers.

New tab, type ’re’, enter. Blocked. No more reddit.

That timeout when unblocking - asking you silent what you intention is to go on Instagram. Did you even remember the reason? I dind'

The UK government recently announced a ban on 16 years olds on social media. On children that live online and have their friends, aspirations and influences come from social media. To fit in, to feel seen – you have to use an app.

And to not to conflate multiple issues - safety is the biggest level of reasoning for this ban from the British Government. However me the most alarming thing to me is not the exposure – it’s the thousands of hours annually staring at a tiny screen. Anywhere. Anytime.

I believe that is wholly a societal bad for young people growing up. I played a lottttttt of video games growing up - and was definitely addicted at some level. So I see this ban as an opportunity to expect social media platforms to change - and an opportunity for kids to be more intentional with their time. The British pessimism writes changes and announcements like this off - but it could be an incredible win for our society if we let it.

But it’s not just young people at risk from these platforms.

I see rampant social media consumption at all ages. From my mother who has thousands of followers, to my best friends who swipe themselves to sleep.

It shouldn’t be this way and the great news is the tooling all exists, but the bad news is that it is on YOU to do something about it. You have expect friction, to be the odd one out. To be unaware of that new meme.

Do you want to be there anyway? An algorithm guessing your interests, your buttons, and pressing them unapologhetically?

There are plethora of tools that have sprung up to provide some solitude that you can use, which is great. These give you the option to set out the model you want - on different devices.

But it’s difficult. Of course it is. I often compare it to not drinking.

You end up sounding like a luddite telling people not to message me on Instagram because you won’t reply. Instead use WhatsaApp, Messages, Telegram: Anything that is not a complimentary feature to a social platform. The technology exists - just in a slightly different format that give you all you need.

My advice woulde 3 options and approaches:

1. Block everything on your phone - even in a browser. Expect to wander. Expect to fail.
2. Setup differnet blocks on differnet platforms - I still watch and enjoy a lot of YouTube - but I block shorts as much as possible. I allow YouTube on my laptop but not my phone*.
3. Accept that you’re gonna need controls around blocking it - not just willpower.

Take yourself to yourself offline and online and figure out what you want to do with your time. Be unapolghetic about this.

• Unless I need to fix something on my bike - and then I just have to wait 30s to watch it.

Written by a human, on a train. Spelling mistakes abound.