I Am Not the Tool

Several weeks ago, I deleted my Meta accounts (Facebook and Instagram), my Bluesky account, all of my content from Substack, and all my videos from YouTube. Then I deleted the YouTube and Substack apps from my phone (I hadn't had the others there to start with).

Two things were happening here at the same time.

The first is that I'm over the social media bullshit. All of it.

I'd be lying if I said I don't miss it at all. There are so many people I'm into who only post over on IG, and now I can see their feed on the whole but can't click into anything. That's definitely a bummer sometimes.

With Facebook, literally the only thing I miss is access to a few of the groups I was part of. I feel left out of the info being shared, and I don't like that. But I'm not willing to trade my attention for access to those groups, so for now, I stay out.

The second thing is that I kept noticing myself picking up my phone looking for something. Sometimes I knew exactly what the something was (I wanted to check the radar, for example) and then forgot within a few seconds because something else on my phone successfully distracted me. Then I'd have to backtrack and figure out what the hell I had even been doing before. (SO frustrating!)

Other times, I'd pick up my phone because... well, I didn't even know why! Was I looking to be distracted? Entertained? I dunno, SOMETHING.

When I removed YouTube, I REALLY started to notice this. I'd have my phone in my hand, wanting something from it, with no idea what. The disappointment woke me up to what I was doing.

==

All of this taken together reminds me of my eating. I often found myself wanting to eat something just because. Not because I was hungry, and not even - as far as I can tell - because I was feeling a particular way that I wanted to get away from. Just because?!

==

Anyway… back to the phone.

It even got so bad that I started picking it up to look through Zillow, or Ground News. So I finally removed Ground News. I don't need that to be quite so accessible. Zillow may be next if I can't get a handle on it.

The overall goal is for my phone to be a tool for me, not me being a tool for the app owners who all want my money and attention.

I know this isn't new or groundbreaking. So many people have talked about this exact thing. It just seems to be one of those things that only really drops through when it really drops through - in its own time rather than my time. And it seems to have dropped through.

I am reclaiming my attention and my agency.