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I took a year off social media. Here's what happened.

2019-11-07 · letter vlog · John · 3:51 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Books & writing) · mode: Personal update · tags: self promotion, calendar ritual

Eleven months into a year off Twitter, Reddit, Instagram and Facebook, John reports that he misses promoting his work but is happier, more productive, better informed, less isolated and reading again, so he won't go back for now; he closes by announcing year two of the Life's Library book club.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why he took a year off social media: unhealthy feelings and lost attention

  • ★★ John says that about 11 months ago he decided to take a year away from Twitter, Reddit, Instagram and Facebook, and gives an update on how it has gone. — 00:00:00 · Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook

  • ★★ His relationship with some social platforms had become unhealthy: using them always left him a mix of scared, angry and outraged, which he calls 'scanged'. — 00:00:13

    “I guess you could call it like, scanged.”

  • ★★ The social internet took huge swaths of his attention, four or five hours a day on his phone plus hours on his computer, and he struggled to choose where his attention went. — 00:00:29

  • ★★ What John misses most is promoting his work: the Partners In Health Sierra Leone fundraising is going amazingly, but he knows there would be more donors and Pizzamas shirt buyers if he posted. — 00:00:40 · Partners In Health, Sierra Leone, Pizzamas

00:00:58 — What he lost and gained; why he isn't going back

  • ★★ John might eventually return to use the platforms only for promotion, but for now he would get sucked back into the feed, given his long history of failing to moderate his social media use and other obsessions. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ John likes his life much more now: his average daily phone time has fallen by more than 80% and he is getting more work done. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ This year (2019) he has written more words he is proud of than in any year since 2011, and hosted Crash Course series on European history and on navigating digital information. — 00:01:33 · Crash Course
  • ★★ He feels better informed than a year ago: he misses watching news unfold live online, but learns a lot from his local newspaper, podcasts and outlets like The Economist. — 00:01:44
  • ★★★ Most important, John is less socially isolated: he spends much more time with friends and family, hard and stressful at first but very fulfilling. — 00:01:56

  • ★★ With no bright line between his life and his job, he had come to feel he was living his job and jobbing his life; he no longer feels that way. — 00:02:05

    “I was living my job and jobbing my life”

  • ★★★ John is not going back to Twitter, Reddit, Instagram or Facebook, not because they are evil but because right now they don't work for him; he is happier and more productive without them. — 00:02:15 · Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook

00:02:26 — The internet he still uses: email, news, lurking, YouTube; paying attention to attention

  • ★★ He still spends much time online: too much email, dumb Google News stories, and some lurking on Twitter and Reddit, which he will probably keep doing. (hedged) — 00:02:26 · Google, Twitter, Reddit
  • ★★ John watches a lot of YouTube, not all of it nourishing, which he thinks is okay: there is a place in the world for wondrously empty distraction. — 00:02:45 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Borrowing a phrase from his friend Amy Krouse Rosenthal, John thinks he has gotten a little better at paying attention to what he pays attention to. — 00:02:50

00:02:55 — Long-form reading returns; Life's Library year two

  • ★★ A year ago his attention was so fractured he could barely read a book for 10 or 15 minutes without reaching for a screen; only in recent months has his joy in long-form reading fully returned. — 00:02:57
  • ★★★ Year-two subscriptions for the Life's Library book club have just opened: in 2020 it will read nine more books, beginning with Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. — 00:03:10

00:03:24 — Life's Library subscription options and link; sign-off

  • ★★ Subscriptions are physical (book, bookplates, perks), digital or a new audiobook option, with a podcast, author Q&As and a reader community on Discord. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ John says reading good books with nice people is wonderful, all proceeds go to charity, and points viewers to LifesLibraryBookClub.com. — 00:03:38

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Facebook · Instagram · Life's Library · Reddit · Twitter

Also: People: Amy Krouse Rosenthal · Octavia E. Butler

Projects: Crash Course · Pizzamas

Works: Parable of the Sower

Organizations: Discord · Google · Partners In Health · The Economist · YouTube

Concepts: loneliness

Places: Sierra Leone

Also centred on Life's Library: Life's Library · never get bored

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