If you read this, hopefully I won’t know.
Let me explain. With Wi-Fi now available even in national parks, one must take great pains to escape the hyperconnectivity of our Internet age. For me, this comes in the form of a strict and much-needed diet I’ll have embarked on by the time this column is published.
The plan is to cut my online activity down to the bare essentials. Why not unplug entirely? Well, I can’t. Not right now. The blessing of the online age is that it allows me to spirit away with my laptop to any Wi-Fi-enabled location, so I can enjoy a family vacation and still make good on my freelance contracts.
The curse is, of course, never being free of the pings, beeps and chirps that irresistibly tease my ego every time somebody tweets, retweets or comments on my words. (You print readers, for the most part, remain enigmatic.) And then there are the endless hours I inevitably lose just by mindlessly following clickbait links into cat video vortexes, BuzzFeed quizzes and indulgently stalking random acquaintances.
It’s a problem. I hesitate to use the word addiction, but it may not be far off. I was in my late teens when the Internet became a mainstream thing. I was in my early 20s when social media first appeared on my radar. So, although I’m almost a digital native, I can compare my brain before and after. I used to be able to concentrate on a task for more than 20 minutes at a time. I used to scoff at people with cellphones, declaring I’d be among the last of the holdouts. Here I am a decade later, fingers itching to get to my phone upon first waking, my attention span ever winnowing down to gnat-like capacity.
I am so thankful I wasn’t even younger when Mark Zuckerberg inadvertently changed the world. Mercifully, I got to live out my teens in relative obscurity. I can remember a world where, faced with a gorgeous plate of food, you’d never think of any other option than to simply tuck in. I remember that world, but I can never go back to it.
I’ve watched dubiously as friends have announced their departure from social media with much aplomb, only to sheepishly return a week or so later. I’ve envied those who’ve quietly slipped, and stayed, away. I fantasize about that option, but it isn’t available to me. Here’s the thing about being under 35 and in any kind of creative, technology or media-related field: employers expect you to be plugged in all the time, whether it’s integral to the job or not.
I can’t tell you how many job postings include some trendy variation of “social media wizard” among their listed requirements. And by that definition, I am unqualified. Because although I Facebook like the best of them (which I understand makes me quite old-fashioned) and can hold up my end of a Twitter debate, I’m not on Pinterest, Vine, Instagram or Ello. I limit my social media reach and attempt to curb the amount of time I spend cultivating my “personal brand.” I do this partly to maintain some semblance of a life as an actual person, and partly to maintain some hope of getting any actual work done. I know for a fact this choice has affected my career — it’s come up in job interviews.
It’s not that I don’t like social media, I’m just not entirely comfortable with the role it plays in my life. I never could have imagined upon creating my first Facebook account how this thing would come to shape my daily existence. At the time, I regarded it like the cigarettes I used to casually smoke at parties or out at the bar (sorry parents). It was a youthful indulgence I’d one day grow out of. In actuality, it’s something I’ve grown up with. Facebook, in particular, has come to form the bedrock of my life.
It’s my news aggregator, my social calendar, a professional tool, a toy and an eerie document of my personal history laced with the ghosts of ex-partners and even dead friends. It derailed my 10-year high school reunion because by the time the landmark rolled around those of us who cared to had already satisfied our curiosity online. It weaves strange tendrils through my social life that occasionally dredge up some very odd surprises. Is it better to know that the person you had a nice chat with at a cocktail party is a misogynistic conspiracy theorist? Or would you rather be left in blissful ignorance with a pleasant memory like days of yore? These are the questions that are now a regular part of my life.
Barring an apocalypse, I’ve been slow to realize, they will be for the rest of it.
I figure I’d better learn to make peace with it now — and learn to summon every scrap of willpower I have and step away from the screen and into the sunshine whenever I can.
Wish me luck.
@jm_barrett
