During the month of May I performed an experiment. I decided to limit myself: I would watch no video (TV, movies, streaming, or internet), play no video games, and stay off social media. It was an enlightening experience.
Soma
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley introduces a fictional drug called soma, which is used to make the people in the story’s future civilization happy and docile. A variety of people have excitedly pointed toward media, and especially television and social media as a kind of modern soma.
I think those arguments are overblown in some ways. In the past hundred years, various pundits have claimed that newspapers, paperback books, comics, radio, and every form of television would also turn us into mindless zombies. Somehow society hasn’t collapsed. However, there’s also clearly some truth in the idea: media can be an escape from the real world, and it’s certainly possible to use it as a mind-numbing drug.
There’s plenty of “junk food” media that passes time, but nobody would claim is great art. Or even mediocre art. A great movie can feel elevating and change your whole outlook on life. But also, Jersey Shore exists. The junk can be fun, but too much of it is obviously problematic.
I’ve certainly done things like doom-scroll Twitter while watching a movie I don’t care about with half an eye. I would frequently watch whatever the YouTube algorithm threw at me while playing a low-effort video game. That’s the sort of behavior that really crams so much stuff into the eyeballs that the brain short-circuits. I like the word used by the YouTube video game theory channel Extra Credits: abnegation, literally entering an ego-negating mental state via the consumption of media.
Finding My Keys
Over the month, I shifted from a lifestyle where I was frequently performing this kind of media-fueled abnegation to one where I consumed almost no screen-based media at all. I did continue to listen to podcasts (although most of these are writing-related) and I read books.
I’m reminded of a comedy act I saw years ago (and unfortunately can no longer find to give credit). They talked about giving up smoking weed.
I could remember things again. I thought I was psychic. I was like, where are my keys?
They’re over on the counter!
How did I know?
I don’t smoke, but I did find that my time used to disappear mysteriously. Where did my evening go? My weekend? That time would just vanish. During May, I really didn’t have that feeling at all. I was experiencing all that time instead of letting it just slip away.
I also noticed some of the environmental factors that contributed to my problem. On day 2, I realized I had the Twitter app open on my phone, with no recollection of opening it. I ended up turning off notifications, because the bird app would ping me first thing in the morning, inviting me to turn off my brain before I even got out of bed.
I also began to notice just how many pings I got from services like Steam and Oculus. When I wasn’t paying attention, all these things together created a steady stream of invitations to distraction every single day. But being aware of them also takes away a lot of their power. It turns out almost none of those notifications were for anything that was more than a 5/10 on my excitement scale, so why would I bother opening them, except out of habit?
What I Did Instead
I read eleven books in a month. (Granted, there were a few short ones in there, but I still find that hard to believe.) I have a bad tendency of buying books faster than I read them, and I have quite a backlog on the book shelf. If I keep reading like this, I could get through it in a couple months.
In addition to all that reading, I got a lot more of my to-do list done. And when bedtime rolled around, I was much more inclined to actually go to bed. I got the appropriate amount of sleep most nights, which is another strange feeling when I’ve spent years depriving myself of sleep to various degrees.
I wrote more, but not a lot more. I found that even when I had more time, my ability to write (as well as do other things) was still limited by my energy. As much as I love it, writing is not low-effort or relaxing to me.
During the week, I only have time at the end of the day, and I’m already drained. Unfortunately, I didn’t find my secret to writing productivity, but I did come to a better understanding of what’s limiting me.
What Changed?
It’s now June. My experiment is over, but it really changed my outlook. While I had the periodic itch to watch something, or pick up Twitter or a video game, I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it.
At the start, I was worried that May would be a miserable month for me. In actuality, it felt really good—so good that I want to keep that feeling going. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up most media forever, but I am going to be much more discriminating when I spend my time watching or playing something.
Taking a month off really clarified which media I’m genuinely excited about. I found that I had no desire to go back to most of the “junk” I was watching before, but I wrote a small list of movies I’ve been meaning to watch and never got around to because it was just slightly more effort than firing up the first thing that caught my eye on YouTube or Netflix. I can still watch less, but feel like I’m getting more out of it.
I’m honestly not sure if I’ll go back to Twitter. It was a slow-burning dumpster fire in April, when they broke all the integrations, and I sincerely doubt it has gotten any better in the past month. It is, unfortunately, still the social media hangout for writers though. I’ve found a lot of great books, blogs, substacks, etc. through it. Time will tell.
Try It, You’ll Like It
I’ll close with this. If you’re someone who consumes a lot of media, I’d encourage you to try this experiment: one month, no TV, movies, games or social media. If it turns out to be miserable, well, it’s only a month. But I don’t think it will. It changed my perspective and my priorities, and somewhat to my surprise, it made me a happier person.
If you decide to try it, let me know. I’d love to know how it goes for you.
Words Deferred 