I’m a proud revolutionary, so join me if you have also had enough and want to make a stand. It’s a no-brainer to break the chains of our enslavement. It’s time for revolution. Or, if you’re a rationalist, it’s time to save money, improve you emotional well-being and save the most valuable thing we all have too little of, time. So many of us are now shackled to the tyranny of procrastination, and breaking free seems an insurmountable task, but it can be done. Join me and give the power back to the people. This isn’t a stand against the government, a tyrannical dictator, the ‘system,’ or anything pollical, so don’t worry. This is a self-interested call to revolt against those that we freely give our precious time to on a daily basis; multinational big-tech organisations that want to keep us addicted to their platforms.

  

How do we begin to revolt? By first accepting that you are in this passion to begin with. It starts with limiting your daily dose of social media. Screech, I hear you cry, but revolution is never for the faint-hearted. This will give us enough time in the day to re-engage with what we really want, peace of mind and a sense of who we are. As the great American philosopher, Henry D. Thoreau, pointed out, after two years secluded in the woods, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

We spend too much of our own time watching other people’s lives, arguing over the machinations of narcissistic celebrities that don’t even know of our existence and judging other people from behind our keyboards. Just imagine the effect this has on our self-esteem when we’re left with our own thoughts for long enough. But that’s the trick; not to be left alone with our thoughts long enough to think rationally. All the tech giants know this, so emotionally trigger us on regular, 8-15 second occasions, so we buy another product, agree with an endorsement or learn to hate someone the tech-giant doesn’t like.

The big tech companies own your thought patters. If you think this statement belongs on an obscure YouTube channel with 84 subscribers, then you are not ready to join the revolution. As far as I know, there is no group of billionaires, rubbing their hands and gleefully celebrating your enslavement to the products their companies produce. Indeed, your enslavement is nothing personal. Big tech companies don’t want to specifically make you live in an Orwellian-dystopian world, ruled by the tech giants virtuous woke agenda, but it just happens to pay that way. Those that own these companies have limited their children and their own use yet are happy to encourage our non-stop addiction to updates, notifications and validation of fellow addicts on the other side of the world. Our day doesn’t feel the same if we don’t get our daily dose of interaction and that’s addictive behaviour. This leads to a sense of agitation, becoming easily offended, incompleteness and the breaking down our emotional resilience to things we don’t like, while increasing our reliance on the external validation of being asked for, soliciting, provoking your opinion to increase your emotional investment to the product.

Imagine, if you still can, that one morning, you awoke and no longer cared what anyone thought of you that didn’t have an emotional involvement in your life. If you want to know how your view of the world is being manipulated by bad news and daily monitoring of what you do and say, try to take the opposing opinion to the mainstream media and see just how the sites you have come to depend on will soon cajole you into complicity or ostracise you from participation of their platform. And being ostracised is an in-built fear of all of us.  

The ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus stated, “The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to precure; but the wealth required by vain, ideals, extends to infinity.” So why are people working so hard to conspicuously consume more, yet freely giving their hard-earned attention to social media? Why do we fall for the marketing? Because we want to; yes, we want to. Just as the abused spouse will find another abuser to take the place of the pervious abuser, we – conditioned by years of usage - find comfort in the narcissistic judgement of social networking sites, rather than undertake the difficult to navigate, yet rewarding, journey to self-realisation. However, once you have started down the path of freedom, there will be many a temptation to pull you back. Remember, addictive social media use is like any other addiction, so coming off or reducing it to no more than an hour, will result is significant withdrawal symptoms; a persistent feeling of agitation, lack of concentration, conflict with others around you and the ever-present possibility of relapse, bingeing and self-hate that will follow.

It’s important to understand the physical addiction to social media and mainstream news networks, because by using these platforms you are connecting neural circuitry paths in your own mind, similar to gambling and recreational drugs use, and – paradoxically - finding temporary relief in the addiction. The more you like, share and subscribe, the more you are emotionally attached to the product and the judgement of other users. And becoming any form of success on social media encourages poor communication, that are usually discouraged in real life interactions, such as speaking about ourselves too often. With few social checks and balances, dopamine is released when we receive positive feedback for doing behaving narcissistically, so and it doesn’t take a genius to see how damaging this is for our ability to listen, empathise and understand other perspectives. Often, the novelty wears off and the social media sites become a coping mechanism to briefly relieve the stress, loneliness, or depression that accompanies continuous use. This, more often, leads to multiple interpersonal dysfunctionalities, such as ignoring real life relationships, work or school responsibilities, and physical health, exacerbating an individual’s undesirable moods swings. And, like any other addiction, this cyclical pattern of relieving the ups and downs of the site increases psychological dependency.

When trying to understand the phenomena of social media, it might seem never have so many people been famous; leading to a super famous class of people or fameoisie, as they are more commonly known. There is no tax on this fame and yet it creates division in society and confers unjust advantages on people who many of us secretly, and not so secretly, aspire to emulate. Yet the top 1% of the fameoisie have over 50% of the subscribers and their parents are often already famous, so the odds of a short period of fame are more acute than ever. This is autocratic not democratic, so leads to a sense of disempowerment for the rest of us, who will believe we must therefore be less relevant. Many are now so trapped in the algorithm of social media that there is no room for free-thinking, thought-provoking, wise behaviour. We are consumers at the centre of a branding exercise.

So, how do we know we have a problem?

• Do you spend a lot of time thinking about or planning to use social media?
• Do you feel urges to use social media, effecting your work / study life?
• Does using social media help you forget about personal problems?
• Have you already tried to reduce use of social media without success?
• Are you restless or troubled if unable to use social media?

If so, then it’s time to engage in a digital detox, starting with baby steps, such as turning off sound notifications and only checking social media sites once an hour. Then, incrementally increase the time in the day you are not on social media, ultimately decreasing it to no more than an hour. Some changes are a must, such as not being on social media while having dinner, lunch or breakfast.

We can, to some extent, discount those who legitimately utilise social media platforms for work, such as Lockedon, or Faceache (you know who I mean) for example, as there is a clear advantage to your continued use but be honest with yourself and recognise when it is more a weapon of procrastination than a proactive tool for business. And there’s a worrying misconception, which the owners of these platforms are slow to dispel, that other users are healthier, happier, wealthier; increasing our sense of underachievement, depression and fear that we are missing out on a better life somehow. We compare our realistic selves to the flawless, filtered, edited online presence of others and so the anxiety and depression result. It may be low-level anxiety, but it’s there and won’t diminish until we restrict our use or have the courage to leave the platform altogether.  

It may be hard to see it, especially with all the mainstream media - who are often co-owned or commercially collaborating - pushing these sites and their perceived benefits, but life without their toxic influence is better. If you smoke, you know it’s bad, yet most don’t even see that social media is bad for their health, so the path is long, arduous and lonely in the beginning.

So, I ask you, for your own health, join me and become a revolutionary.