Leaving social media (part 2)
I've been joking recently that since turning 25, my frontal lobe truly finished developing and it's been putting me on all sorts of paths of new thinking. For lack of a better description, I feel like I'm thinking more like an adultier adult. Introspectively, it feels like I've gone through a lot of growth in the past couple months, which is really neat to reflect on.
That being said, I wanted to document the steps that I am taking to "dumb down" my life some. I want to get off social media completely, I want to spend less time on my phone, and I want to still feel "in the loop" about current events and my favorite creators.
Enter RSS feeds.
I'm not a techy person, but in a nutshell, RSS feeds allow you to curate what media you want to see from different sources in one finite feed. It is the ultimate tool for curation and blocking out noise. It makes me love the internet again!And they're not new, by any means--RSS is pretty old school, as far as the 2020s go.
Below I've outlined some of my ongoing process that will, hopefully, help me live in harmony with the internet again. Dumb phones still have an allure, but man, I love being able to use GPS.
Social media replacement
For this to be a sustainable change that I feel content with, I have 3 benchmarks that I feel must be met to quit social media without feeling a loss:
- Keep up with current events without having to sift through pages of searches to figure out what is the most relevant (because there is breaking news literally every four seconds)
- Create a "digital scrapbook" of my own that allows me to document the events that I would normally share on social media. Bonus if I have complete control over the content/format and who it is shared with (spoiler alert: that's what this blog is for)
- View content from my favorite creators and keep up with the pop culture news I actually care about, which typically just means what is going on in the music industry. Just because I want to give up social media doesn't mean I'm trying to be go off the grid.
- Allow me to see updates from my friends/family without the clutter of a money-hungry algorithm. This is the most difficult benchmark to meet because it requires others to step away from big social media, which can be inconvenient, and as we know, convenience is king.
To achieve this, I've downloaded the "feeeed" app to my phone (free and available for iOS). So far, it's working beautifully. I've added my favorite news sources (Associated Press, Reuters), as well as blogs from content creators I enjoy. It even let's me add YouTube channels to my feed, so I can view videos from channels I enjoy without the rest of the noise!For my pop culture fix, I added a BlueSky channel that posts Taylor Swift updates. This gives me enough information to stay in the loop and give me the opportunity to dig deeper into something if it piques my interest, without giving me so much information that I get overloaded or doomscroll for hours.
I choose the content that populates, so it always has an end. There is only so much content you can gather from the same 5-10 sources.
"Dumb phone" (but not really)
I've tried tons of different methods to reduce the amount of time I spend on my phone. I've made the wallpaper a plain black screen, I've set screen time limits, I've tried every app there is, but it still feels so easy to get around. I'm really leaning into the idea that my phone is a tool, not a toy. My homescreen has my calendar widget and four folders for utilitarian apps (Finance, Apple, Google, and Training). Messages, Phone, Spotify, and Maps are in my dock for easy access. I also keep the white point reduced and have a black & white color filter on so my screen looks as close to e-ink as an LCD screen can. (Note: Both of these settings are under accessibility) I decided to "allow" my lockscreen to be a picture of Liam and me, but it's in black & white, so it's still not super distracting.
General digital streamlining
Digital clutter is something I have always struggled with. I'm pretty sure I have no less than 3 old laptops I'm hanging onto simply because they have photos on them that need to be exported. That is an ongoing uphill battle. But I'm working on streamlining in other ways. Some of this is prompted by the fact that I finally started the processing of changing my name this year, such as making a new email address. This category is a little all over the place, and I'm sort of just seeing where the wind takes me. For starters, I've deleted tons of accounts that I no longer need/use (goodbye, UniDays student discount codes) and deleted two Gmail accounts that I no longer needed. I cleaned up the subscriptions associated with my primary email, which I've had since I was 11, and will now be my "catch-all" email for any accounts I need to make. Then I made two new email accounts, one for vital accounts (think doctor's office portal) and one that will strictly be for real people to contact me. Maybe it's wishful thinking that email will come back, but if it does, I'll be ready.
But what about keeping up with friends/family without social media?
That's the tricky part. The beautiful thing about my RSS reader is I can add blogs and get posts added directly to my feed. The less beautiful thing is that I don't know of anyone else who has a personal blog now. Prove me wrong! Start your own version of social media through blogging! Tell me all about it so I can follow your posts!
And, if you're going to curate your own RSS feed, you can subscribe to my blog :)