This is, I guess, the point in the column where I should call for everyone to abandon X. I have not posted regularly there in years, and I’d urge others to limit their use as well. Nor have I taken up BlueSky or Threads. I find that much time spent on any of these platforms shapes me in ways I don’t want to be shaped. All of these platforms create a feeling of being informed and connected that is fundamentally false. You learn too many of the wrong things and spend too much time in the company of the worst people. An hour spent with a newspaper, a magazine or a book, or in conversation with another human being or listening to people on a podcast, is far more valuable.
But I’ve never been comfortable calling for those kinds of all-or-nothing boycotts. If you think, for your reasons, you need to be on these platforms, or should be on them, or want to be on them, so be it. It’s not like Instagram or TikTok are spotless alternatives, and receding completely from the algorithmic sphere is often unrealistic. My approach to all these places is roughly Frodo’s approach to the Ring: I try to be there as little as possible, and recognize how badly I feel immediately afterward.
Unlike Ezra, I’m thoroughly comfortable with recommending complete abandonment of all the big social media platforms. They destroy tranquility, celebrate purely performative identity gestures, amplify rage, and habituate us to pointless fighting with strangers. If you believe that “receding completely from the algorithmic sphere is often unrealistic,” perhaps you need a conversation with yourself about the meaning of the word “unrealistic.”