Digital Hygiene and Peace of Mind

Peace on the internet is often difficult to achieve for people who live a significant portion of their lives digitally. We pay attention to what people say and do, and we treat our interactions as if they were local conversations. We allow ourselves to be offended by strangers and emotions often surge. We see emails, dms, badges, alerts, and messages as calls to action, and we must respond. It is exhausting. It saps productivity and interferes with meaningful interactions in real life. Recognizing these issues in myself, I have started the journey to find peace while remaining on the internet. Unlike digital luddites, I am not going to throw out my phone, delete all my apps, remove all my accounts, etc., but I will drop some channels of engagement and set more boundaries.

I recently published a post on peace and quiet on LinkedIn. Making my rules of engagement more restrictive was one of the best changes I could have made. I see daily views of my profile by vendors and salespeople, and yet I no longer see the continual stream of messages and connection requests that were so distracting. I will look at viewers' profiles and make my own decision on whether I want to engage further. In my post I mentioned loosening restrictions after the holidays. At this point, I don't think I will.

Like many technologists I had accounts on every major platform: Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, and others. In 2020, I allowed myself to be pulled into too many political fights on social media. The arguments were pointless. No minds were changed and many meaningless insults were exchanged. I deleted my original long-lived Twitter account and did a reset, censoring myself and resisting the urge to engage in political fights. Instead, I started following more technology leaders and luminaries. However, I often witnessed the same petty and pointless debates between people I had respected. Add in the recent acquisition by Elon Musk, and Twitter has become a cesspool of bad information and even more pointless fights. The rise of Musk sycophants and trolls has made Twitter completely insufferable. Every time I checked my feed, I saw something upsetting. Other platforms like TikTok and Instagram are time sinks. You can lose hours without realizing it and finish feeling like you simply threw that time away. These realizations forced me to honestly evaluate what matters moving forward.

As a result of this self-reflection, I made the following changes:

1. Deleted Twitter with a commitment never to rejoin unless the platform changes substantially.
2. Deleted Instagram. It provided very little value and was simply distracting.
3. Deleted TikTok. I should be spending that time interacting with my friends and family.
4. Retained Facebook because of friends and family, but muted people who were overly negative, dropped friends who were random Facebook interactions only, and deleted all my comments and posts I felt were less than helpful.
5. Joined Mastodon, limiting myself to very specific servers that are well moderated.
6. Reviewed Reddit and Discord to ensure nothing I was following was going to be distracting.
7. Deleted online forum accounts like Disqus, which were just excuses to argue.
8. Unsubscribed from every email list I wasn't reading frequently or which I found too distracting.
9. Reviewed all my saved accounts on my browser, purging anything that wasn't useful.
10. Blocked news sources on my google news page that were too partisan or divisive.

Social media and the internet as a whole are like drugs. You can become addicted. Many users receive intermittent reinforcement, which is the strongest conditioning to continue a behavior. However, negative stress inducing interactions frequently outweigh the good, making social media in particular a destructive compulsion. I have decided to go "cold turkey" with respect to my own partial addiction. I already feel better. When I look at a device like my phone or tablet, I no longer feel drawn to a social media app. I know when I check my personal email, I am going to see 5-15 unread messages instead of 50+. I am no longer looking to argue anymore, trying instead to learn and understand. While not perfect, I feel like I am on the path to digital peace.

As we wrap up 2022 and plan for 2023, I encourage everyone to review their digital lives and shed those things that are eating up time without many positive outcomes. Unsubscribe, delete accounts, remove apps, and shift your focus to those things that genuinely make your lives better.