01.31.25

towards the end of last year, i began writing down things i will abstain from for 2025. less of a new year’s resolution, more of a simple to-do list. for me, this included reevaluating my social media usage.

this past semester, i had developed an ugly habit i never thought i’d fall into: doomscrolling. reels upon reels of content overload, fast-paced and fast-fed, a carousel of mindless entertainment and numbing mortal horrors, each scroll anaesthetizing my brain and disrupting the focus and discipline i had carefully cultivated since my teens.

and while i do think it is imperative to be informed of the current state of affairs, it has become less of a moral duty and more an impulse borne out of guilt. this impulse to intake information, with nowhere else for it to go, only rots the mind to a point of apathy.

it made me think—how online do i have to be? i don’t believe i’m exempt from knowing the goings-on in the world, but i have recognized how jarring it is to constantly see this much evil, especially knowing that the platform i use to bear witness to it is run by men that only benefit from our attachment to those apps, whether it is out of a zealous desire to be informed, a superficial gratification for social needs, or simply because we are so accustomed to having them around.

it is at this point where it becomes important to acknowledge that the average person who talks of resistance would not be willing to sacrifice their personal comfort at a superficial level. for every questionable app update, there is someone out there making a tutorial for how to minimize the profits gained by apps such as meta and musk’s twitter by making sure not to click on ads or disabling certain features. but even so, we are still on the app. and it is why i had been fickle about deactivating before, and it’s hard not to be when being online is almost all i’ve ever known.

and that’s the thing: i refuse to only feel more helpless about the state of the world thanks to these soul-sucking distractions from apps. i think, over the course of this winter break, i have come to outgrow the mindset that we are all too damned to fix our hearts, minds, and souls—and that we should concede to our incessant need to know everything.

ultimately, this brings me back to my initial inquiry—how online do i have to be? and further, how can i stay informed without sacrificing my own sanity?

my goal is to avoid turning to ignorance while not completely overwhelming myself with information. and it is possible; there are ways to get information elsewhere. finding alternative news sources besides social media and generally living a more analogue life will lessen my reliance on my phone.

all of my existing concerns for privacy and online security needs to be better addressed in the coming months. i no longer feel a need to use for bluesky because i feel more comfortable with thoughts.page, and so i only retain instagram in terms of social media. facebook is deactivated and i don't have the app on my phone, and thus my usage is almost non-existent on the desktop.

because ultimately, there is a slower and more digestible way to get through life. because, at the end of the day, there’s only so much i can take, and i don’t need to know every excruciating detail of our mortal collapse. i need only know enough to know what to think and feel. to know any more is to fail in both.