This essay was originally published on the “old” thombehrens.com on 02/10/2020.


For about half a year, my partner Liz and I have slept with our phones left charging in another room, instead of by our bedside tables. We started this habit in order to give our minds time to “wind down” and make it easier to fall asleep, and as such we don’t go to bed thinking about online shopping, email, or – crucial during an election cycle – news from Twitter.

We spent the past weekend on retreat in the woods, which brought me healthy distance from my extremely online tendencies, with one exception: my phone (my alarm when I’m not at home) ended up plugged in right next to my bed. Liz and I were sleeping in separate rooms, and she was able to separately confirm: we each experienced incredible trouble falling asleep. Not only did the phone in close proximity provide an unfamiliar temptation and prove hard to put down (for over an hour after “lights out”!), but it left my mind absolutely buzzing with worries and wonders and random thoughts well into the night.

Tristan Harris is one of my favorite writers on this subject. This NewYork Times article is entitled “Our Brains Are No Match for Our Technology”. 

Evaluating my commitment to technology is not a new field of observation for me, but I’ve spend the last few days more sensitive to what parts of the day my phone is able to dictate. I’m registering more clearly that when I’m on my phone, I’m stealing away reading time, making myself late for commitments, and “zoning in” to realize I’ve become inattentive to something Liz is saying.

Right now, the “big one” for me is Twitter. A year ago it was Instagram, two years ago, Facebook. The cost of throwing my time into social media is my time, focus, effectiveness, and relationships. Studies show that personal satisfaction is also on the chopping block. So at that cost, there must be a tremendous benefit, right?

I’ve heard it espoused, but now personally coming to realize, that Twitter isn’t actually connecting me to anyone in a substantive way. I keep up with family and close friends over text, and with friends that I care about (even professional ones) I’ve been able to take up the wonderful habit of scheduling semi-regular video calls. There are still tech blogs, release notes, and Slack channels (both professional and hobbyist) to keep me abreast of what’s new in the field. When I really want to connect with an individual or a group of folks I care about – Twitter isn’t my top choice, anyway. It’s just somehow become the default.

It’s not hard for me to find ways to replace all the utility that social media serves me today, or even to recognize that the utility that’s there is pretty shallow. With those tools replaced Twitter is reduced down to the distracting, anxiety-producing, time sucking elements that I would love to kiss goodbye. 

In the last year, I’ve taken other steps to help regulate my relationship with social media: keeping my phone in the pocket of my non-dominant hand and starting to wear a watch on my wrist have both helped substantially lower the rate at which I idly pull out my phone. But those fixes are not solutions to the root problem. They don’t prevent Twitter from totally derailing an hour of my day, they just lower the number of chances Twitter has to derail me down from infinity.

I quit smoking about a year and a half ago. The frustration I feel from trying to temper social media usage feel about the same as the frustration as I had when I tried to “wean off”. I think the time to go cold turkey is approaching.

Twitter is the last “public” social media site that I am part of… if and when I do leave, it will be the closing of the final door, in a sense. I hope that when I kick Twitter, I’ll also kick the lie telling me that Twitter was helping me fulfill my commitment to keep up with friends and family. I hope that I’ll be able to grow into the habits of real communication that I already have: Video calls with work friends, group chats with college friends, email chains with family. Maybe if I don’t see the memes my college roommate posts every day, I’ll miss him enough to find out how his actual life is going! Not to mention getting coffee with people, and finding other opportunities to give friends real time and practice deep listening.

I’m also excited to explore new modes of digital & analog communication. The manifesto currently posted at hey.com has me really excited for the future of email. Dailup Audio is also an incredible app concept that is also a ton of fun – I highly recommend trying it at least once. Maybe I’ll also get some of that reading time back!

Lastly, welcome – this is a blog! A blog currently auditioning as replacement for the “output” part of social media. No promises yet. This is a thought experiment in progress, and for that reason I won’t be advertising this post publicly for the time being.