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the dilemma of digital disconnection
I am so, so tired of pretending like the internet is good for me!
It is not helping me— I am falling apart after every scroll. I find myself searching for two or three specific people and either logging off due to inactivity or obsessing over what they’ve posted since I last checked. I post on social media sites like TikTok because I know there are certain people that will watch my videos. I also hope to be plucked from the anonymity of TikTok’s algorithm and one day be granted access to virality in such a way that I never have to work a day in my life every again, ignoring the thought that this could possibly affect every single personal relationship in my life for the worse. I’ll check three stories on Instagram, scroll through posts by people I do not know or do not like. I look at a DM from a friend, let the meme go without responding. Because none of it matters.
I want things I don’t need, feel emotions I don’t have, and take stock of strangers’ lives in ways I was never meant to, all because of my personal relationship to social media. I turn twenty-nine next year, and I am finally ready to rid myself of the baggage that has plagued me my entire childhood and adult life— my excessive use of the algorithmic internet.
I was raised in the age of Myspace, Tumblr, Oovoo, Skype, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, etc. All of these social media sites likely still have my personal data, and are likely still selling it to ad companies to profit on my childhood fears and aspirations. I did not learn how to become myself— I was molded into who I am today by the images and words on my screens.
01. the pros
Social media is entertaining— point blank. The interconnection between social media and pop culture was a catalyst for some of my favorite hyperfixations of my childhood. And when social media became the sole force for artists and performers to interact and reach their fanbase, it was kismet. Like the singularity, the universe exploded and grew exponentially.
In the early age of social media, artists no longer had to cultivate their audience. The fans created space themselves— through stan and update accounts— and this use of socials pushed us into a new era of pop culture experiences. We knew everything about everyone. Oftentimes, too much. This was my niche on the internet, and I gained some amazing friends from the experience. But I did not need to know that much about anyone, much less artists that live half the world over. I believe we can see the residual effects of this constant surveillance of celebrities today, and I’m ashamed I had a small part in it.
Social media is also a space where education and information can be widely distributed without paywalls or bureaucratic tape. Depending on the source, the information is actually incredibly useful and worth the time to learn and digest. Unfortunately, we normally just passively learn this information without taking the time to let our brain process. We simply scroll on.
As an activist, and proclaimed socialist, I believe that civic engagement and community building are two of the most important things we can develop as a just and more empathetic society. Social media assists in the gathering, tracking, and marketing of events, vital information, and volunteer opportunities for our communities. Really, one of the last ways to share important civic information is through social media. This is a pro that I have a hard time losing, but I will find ways to overcome the deficit. Civic engagement and community outreach has existed long before the algorithm, and will exists long after.
Finally, social media stimulates and facilitations connections— with family, friends, future partners, future friends. We can keep up with people with so much ease now that we might not feel the need to contact anyone directly through their phone number or even by letter. However, I think this type of passive connectivity is a reason why we are not more connected with our direct communities. When thinking about the sphere of influence, the closest sphere to the self is control. We cannot control what we see from our friends and families on social media, we cannot control the information they give us. However, we can control how we interact with the narratives they create. We can reach out ourselves and form our own 1:1 narratives without the third-party social media app showing us what it wants to show us.
I no longer want to build my world around what the internet thinks I want to see— I want to build a space where I can share, learn, and find information that I desire and aspire to connect to and with.
02. the cons
I was on Tumblr with #thinspo and #proana was thriving. And as a 12 year old Black girl raised in the US, some of it worked on me. I didn’t have many other cultural references in 2011. I wanted to look like the girls and women that were being reposted on my feed because popularity is its own form of currency. And please don’t prescribe to the idea that Eurocentric norms are only upheld by white people. Learn nuance. I only reposted the skinny Black girls, because that was the content that spoke to me.
This is just one example of the ways in which the internet disturbed my childhood, just one detrimental experience after another in the age of social media. Parents couldn’t keep up with the fast-pace of their children’s social media usage, and it showed.
Thus, as a teenager raised by social media, I became less and less happy with the physical world I was living in. I yearned for the reality I was creating for myself online. In hindsight, I believe this led to a panic disorder that did not loosen its grip on my nervous system until I turned twenty and my hormones started regulated themselves.
My excessive use of social media apps has created a gap between what I do in a day and what I see in a day. What I do might be benign— wake up, work at my job, take a s**t, go for a run. But what I see in a day tells a different story. Within a six-minute timeframe, I can scroll from breaking news in a country I will never visit, a video about a stray dog three states over, to a story time of a woman manipulated by her abusive therapist— only to find out that the woman was using generative AI to dictate how she was behaving towards said therapist. None of these stories have anything in common other than that my algorithms believed I would be interested enough in all three to keep scrolling. And it’s almost always right.
My avoidant attachment style also craves the anonymity of the social media, and that is another reason why I must cut a couple major cords. Avoidants really like learning and gathering intel about a person from afar, and social media is the perfect cyberspace for a girl like me to obsess and crush over someone without actually having to get to know them. I can simply create my own version of them in my head based on the limited information they’ve posted on the internet. And anyone can do the same for me, instead of actually speaking to me and getting to know my quirks in real time.
Para-social relationships are ruining our world, and we don’t realize it because we assume these “connections” to be real.
Truth be told, I’ve sometimes used dating apps as their own form of social media. I am sharing my best photos, with my wittiest commentary, in order to (hopefully) match with a decent human being that I may or may not meet in person. That gamble has led me to being detached in building relationships in the past, and often I found myself “liking” someone just because they’re there, and also craving affection (attention) from another human being. I can say that I’ve learned from this behavior, because I’ve met some really special people through dating apps since, but those are true outliers. And I had to unlearn some really unhealthy habits I’d harbored around romantic relationships and digital communication.
The nuance of dating through social media has perverted the ways in which we find love, share love, and care ourselves and others. If I want to continue to find and cultivate connection, romantic or platonic, I first need to dissect the relationship with my For You page.
The disinformation and rampant use of AI on social media is just the nail in the coffin. I hate AI, I hate the idea that society has decided to stop working on its media and reading literacy and we have succumbed to the reality that is fake news and AI videos of Tupac working at Arby’s. The type of brainrot, stupid b******t is going to ruin us in five year’s time (if it hasn’t already).
Ultimately, the cons outweigh the pros. I will not continue using heavy algorithmic apps like TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook simply because that is where I can find people I know. If I need to know what my loved ones are doing, I will interact with them directly. And if I want to meet strangers, I will find them some other way.
03. conclusion
I lied at the beginning of this essay.
I am not completely deleting myself from the internet, but I am taking myself out of the algorithmic spaces that have distorted my basic life philosophy, simply because social media was there and I wanted distraction. I will still use apps that will connect me with friends and family, but they will be niche and likely not popular places to visit. That is fine— I realized that I do not want every person I’ve ever come into contact with to have access to me.
Instead, I will be updating all the contacts in my phone with birthdays, emails, and home addresses. People move and I haven’t sent snail mail to some of my friends in years. I want to know what my friends’ writing looks like, and I want to see what they thought would be the most interesting things to share with me in a letter. I want to be intentional with the information I share, and I want my friends to do the same.
I also want my time back.
Countless hours have been spent scrolling, staring, sharing. I do not know why or for whom.
I yearn for a boredom that is solely derived from spending lots of time with a person without devices, and talking about nonsense until we thread a beautiful conversation together that generative AI companies long to duplicate. I want to find myself staring out a window on the bus, thinking of nothing in particular, rather than scrolling to a video that has been curated for me (specifically) to watch so that I watch the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and so on.
I also want to read more books. I am a reader, a researcher, and a life-long learner. I need more time to focus on personal development and recreational activities that don’t involve wireless internet or a data plan.
Note: In writing this, I find myself wanting to delete every other word.
It feels very self-important and even callus to write about how social media is “too much” for me. I’m aware of the incredible and nearly impossible feats people have experienced to simply inform the masses. This is good and invaluable work that can only be created through sharing content through algorithmic means. Without social media like TikTok, so many global atrocities engineered through historically detrimental -isms (colonialism, fascism, racism, extremism, sexism, etc) would be completely silenced through popular news media conglomerates.
I am also not saying that I will fall off the face of the earth and become a hermit, never to connect with major social and political events again. I fully believe in community organizing, activism, and mass mobilization for the common good. I just cannot waste any more of my time fighting against an machine that wants me to stay confined to a niche digital corner of my own making, screaming into an echo chamber that spits the same rhetoric back at me. Or worse, a hate machine that learns what I detest the most in humankind and dangles that rage bait content to me like a worm on a hook. I will bite no more.
The best place to find common ground with your fellow woman is in real life, with real people that you see every day. With irl humans in your community that value you and check on you, that want to know how your day went, your desires, your dreams.
04. where to find me
I will obviously be on Substack, as it has become my favorite place to share my thoughts via long-form writing.
Check out my Linktree below for all the places you can find me on The Internet, updated when I want and if I so please.
I’m unsure if there’s anyone that actually cares enough to check up on me and see what I’m writing/reading/doing, but I will share the links regardless, in the hope that some do.
Get full access to common dilemmas at keyanajmiller.substack.com/subscribe
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By Explore the chaotic intersections of life, culture, and humanity. One messy truth at a time.I am so, so tired of pretending like the internet is good for me!
It is not helping me— I am falling apart after every scroll. I find myself searching for two or three specific people and either logging off due to inactivity or obsessing over what they’ve posted since I last checked. I post on social media sites like TikTok because I know there are certain people that will watch my videos. I also hope to be plucked from the anonymity of TikTok’s algorithm and one day be granted access to virality in such a way that I never have to work a day in my life every again, ignoring the thought that this could possibly affect every single personal relationship in my life for the worse. I’ll check three stories on Instagram, scroll through posts by people I do not know or do not like. I look at a DM from a friend, let the meme go without responding. Because none of it matters.
I want things I don’t need, feel emotions I don’t have, and take stock of strangers’ lives in ways I was never meant to, all because of my personal relationship to social media. I turn twenty-nine next year, and I am finally ready to rid myself of the baggage that has plagued me my entire childhood and adult life— my excessive use of the algorithmic internet.
I was raised in the age of Myspace, Tumblr, Oovoo, Skype, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, etc. All of these social media sites likely still have my personal data, and are likely still selling it to ad companies to profit on my childhood fears and aspirations. I did not learn how to become myself— I was molded into who I am today by the images and words on my screens.
01. the pros
Social media is entertaining— point blank. The interconnection between social media and pop culture was a catalyst for some of my favorite hyperfixations of my childhood. And when social media became the sole force for artists and performers to interact and reach their fanbase, it was kismet. Like the singularity, the universe exploded and grew exponentially.
In the early age of social media, artists no longer had to cultivate their audience. The fans created space themselves— through stan and update accounts— and this use of socials pushed us into a new era of pop culture experiences. We knew everything about everyone. Oftentimes, too much. This was my niche on the internet, and I gained some amazing friends from the experience. But I did not need to know that much about anyone, much less artists that live half the world over. I believe we can see the residual effects of this constant surveillance of celebrities today, and I’m ashamed I had a small part in it.
Social media is also a space where education and information can be widely distributed without paywalls or bureaucratic tape. Depending on the source, the information is actually incredibly useful and worth the time to learn and digest. Unfortunately, we normally just passively learn this information without taking the time to let our brain process. We simply scroll on.
As an activist, and proclaimed socialist, I believe that civic engagement and community building are two of the most important things we can develop as a just and more empathetic society. Social media assists in the gathering, tracking, and marketing of events, vital information, and volunteer opportunities for our communities. Really, one of the last ways to share important civic information is through social media. This is a pro that I have a hard time losing, but I will find ways to overcome the deficit. Civic engagement and community outreach has existed long before the algorithm, and will exists long after.
Finally, social media stimulates and facilitations connections— with family, friends, future partners, future friends. We can keep up with people with so much ease now that we might not feel the need to contact anyone directly through their phone number or even by letter. However, I think this type of passive connectivity is a reason why we are not more connected with our direct communities. When thinking about the sphere of influence, the closest sphere to the self is control. We cannot control what we see from our friends and families on social media, we cannot control the information they give us. However, we can control how we interact with the narratives they create. We can reach out ourselves and form our own 1:1 narratives without the third-party social media app showing us what it wants to show us.
I no longer want to build my world around what the internet thinks I want to see— I want to build a space where I can share, learn, and find information that I desire and aspire to connect to and with.
02. the cons
I was on Tumblr with #thinspo and #proana was thriving. And as a 12 year old Black girl raised in the US, some of it worked on me. I didn’t have many other cultural references in 2011. I wanted to look like the girls and women that were being reposted on my feed because popularity is its own form of currency. And please don’t prescribe to the idea that Eurocentric norms are only upheld by white people. Learn nuance. I only reposted the skinny Black girls, because that was the content that spoke to me.
This is just one example of the ways in which the internet disturbed my childhood, just one detrimental experience after another in the age of social media. Parents couldn’t keep up with the fast-pace of their children’s social media usage, and it showed.
Thus, as a teenager raised by social media, I became less and less happy with the physical world I was living in. I yearned for the reality I was creating for myself online. In hindsight, I believe this led to a panic disorder that did not loosen its grip on my nervous system until I turned twenty and my hormones started regulated themselves.
My excessive use of social media apps has created a gap between what I do in a day and what I see in a day. What I do might be benign— wake up, work at my job, take a s**t, go for a run. But what I see in a day tells a different story. Within a six-minute timeframe, I can scroll from breaking news in a country I will never visit, a video about a stray dog three states over, to a story time of a woman manipulated by her abusive therapist— only to find out that the woman was using generative AI to dictate how she was behaving towards said therapist. None of these stories have anything in common other than that my algorithms believed I would be interested enough in all three to keep scrolling. And it’s almost always right.
My avoidant attachment style also craves the anonymity of the social media, and that is another reason why I must cut a couple major cords. Avoidants really like learning and gathering intel about a person from afar, and social media is the perfect cyberspace for a girl like me to obsess and crush over someone without actually having to get to know them. I can simply create my own version of them in my head based on the limited information they’ve posted on the internet. And anyone can do the same for me, instead of actually speaking to me and getting to know my quirks in real time.
Para-social relationships are ruining our world, and we don’t realize it because we assume these “connections” to be real.
Truth be told, I’ve sometimes used dating apps as their own form of social media. I am sharing my best photos, with my wittiest commentary, in order to (hopefully) match with a decent human being that I may or may not meet in person. That gamble has led me to being detached in building relationships in the past, and often I found myself “liking” someone just because they’re there, and also craving affection (attention) from another human being. I can say that I’ve learned from this behavior, because I’ve met some really special people through dating apps since, but those are true outliers. And I had to unlearn some really unhealthy habits I’d harbored around romantic relationships and digital communication.
The nuance of dating through social media has perverted the ways in which we find love, share love, and care ourselves and others. If I want to continue to find and cultivate connection, romantic or platonic, I first need to dissect the relationship with my For You page.
The disinformation and rampant use of AI on social media is just the nail in the coffin. I hate AI, I hate the idea that society has decided to stop working on its media and reading literacy and we have succumbed to the reality that is fake news and AI videos of Tupac working at Arby’s. The type of brainrot, stupid b******t is going to ruin us in five year’s time (if it hasn’t already).
Ultimately, the cons outweigh the pros. I will not continue using heavy algorithmic apps like TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook simply because that is where I can find people I know. If I need to know what my loved ones are doing, I will interact with them directly. And if I want to meet strangers, I will find them some other way.
03. conclusion
I lied at the beginning of this essay.
I am not completely deleting myself from the internet, but I am taking myself out of the algorithmic spaces that have distorted my basic life philosophy, simply because social media was there and I wanted distraction. I will still use apps that will connect me with friends and family, but they will be niche and likely not popular places to visit. That is fine— I realized that I do not want every person I’ve ever come into contact with to have access to me.
Instead, I will be updating all the contacts in my phone with birthdays, emails, and home addresses. People move and I haven’t sent snail mail to some of my friends in years. I want to know what my friends’ writing looks like, and I want to see what they thought would be the most interesting things to share with me in a letter. I want to be intentional with the information I share, and I want my friends to do the same.
I also want my time back.
Countless hours have been spent scrolling, staring, sharing. I do not know why or for whom.
I yearn for a boredom that is solely derived from spending lots of time with a person without devices, and talking about nonsense until we thread a beautiful conversation together that generative AI companies long to duplicate. I want to find myself staring out a window on the bus, thinking of nothing in particular, rather than scrolling to a video that has been curated for me (specifically) to watch so that I watch the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and so on.
I also want to read more books. I am a reader, a researcher, and a life-long learner. I need more time to focus on personal development and recreational activities that don’t involve wireless internet or a data plan.
Note: In writing this, I find myself wanting to delete every other word.
It feels very self-important and even callus to write about how social media is “too much” for me. I’m aware of the incredible and nearly impossible feats people have experienced to simply inform the masses. This is good and invaluable work that can only be created through sharing content through algorithmic means. Without social media like TikTok, so many global atrocities engineered through historically detrimental -isms (colonialism, fascism, racism, extremism, sexism, etc) would be completely silenced through popular news media conglomerates.
I am also not saying that I will fall off the face of the earth and become a hermit, never to connect with major social and political events again. I fully believe in community organizing, activism, and mass mobilization for the common good. I just cannot waste any more of my time fighting against an machine that wants me to stay confined to a niche digital corner of my own making, screaming into an echo chamber that spits the same rhetoric back at me. Or worse, a hate machine that learns what I detest the most in humankind and dangles that rage bait content to me like a worm on a hook. I will bite no more.
The best place to find common ground with your fellow woman is in real life, with real people that you see every day. With irl humans in your community that value you and check on you, that want to know how your day went, your desires, your dreams.
04. where to find me
I will obviously be on Substack, as it has become my favorite place to share my thoughts via long-form writing.
Check out my Linktree below for all the places you can find me on The Internet, updated when I want and if I so please.
I’m unsure if there’s anyone that actually cares enough to check up on me and see what I’m writing/reading/doing, but I will share the links regardless, in the hope that some do.
Get full access to common dilemmas at keyanajmiller.substack.com/subscribe