I grew up in an ex-socialist country and we got our first McDonald's in the mid 90s. It was an exciting new thing, a new taste, a new model of restaurants and consumption. My family took us on multiple road trips to the McDonald's, which was in a different city. Nobody thought about whether it's healthy, because eating there was a privilege. 20 years later, fast food chains are everywhere, and if my attitude hadn't changed from the 90s, I'd have a serious health issue.
I feel like the Internet, and social media in particular, are going through the same period. What was once exotic and a privilege, is now instantly-available, algorithmically-optimized junk food. And it's not healthy to use it as your main source of nutrition.
The good news is that, just like McDonald's didn't kill good, healthy restaurants, so has social media not killed good, healthy sources of information. Most of the blogs I followed growing up are still active and rediscovering them - and setting up an RSS reader again - has been a great feeling. News sources that give you thoughtful context, instead of a dopamine feed, like The Economist and The New Yorker, are also thriving. Replacing podcasts with audiobooks on my dog walk listen has also gave me pause and perspective.
So my New Year's resolution is every time I open Twitter or Facebook, to ask myself whether I would eat at a McDonald's today.
Every time I find myself scrolling through Facebook, I ask myself "am I here for me, because I really want to be, or am I here for Facebook because they've reward-hacked my motivation subsystem?" That thought in itself is usually enough for me to shrug and close the window.
And it's not healthy to use it as your main source of nutrition.
This is especially important. Twitter has desensitized its users to the point where thousands of people bullying someone into committing suicide doesn't upset anybody. All that recently happened, and it was a wake-up call for me; looking around, nobody actually cared that someone had died, they had all moved on to whatever short-lived meme had taken over.
Leaving Twitter and going to HN, google News, and RSS has definitely been challenging (albeit pretty interesting). It's a lot harder to actually get myself to read articles instead of just headlines, and I've been realizing how short my attention span is because of Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. I wish more people would leave and start using actual news sources again instead of just reading headlines.
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I grew up in an ex-socialist country and we got our first McDonald's in the mid 90s. It was an exciting new thing, a new taste, a new model of restaurants and consumption. My family took us on multiple road trips to the McDonald's, which was in a different city. Nobody thought about whether it's healthy, because eating there was a privilege. 20 years later, fast food chains are everywhere, and if my attitude hadn't changed from the 90s, I'd have a serious health issue.
I feel like the Internet, and social media in particular, are going through the same period. What was once exotic and a privilege, is now instantly-available, algorithmically-optimized junk food. And it's not healthy to use it as your main source of nutrition.
The good news is that, just like McDonald's didn't kill good, healthy restaurants, so has social media not killed good, healthy sources of information. Most of the blogs I followed growing up are still active and rediscovering them - and setting up an RSS reader again - has been a great feeling. News sources that give you thoughtful context, instead of a dopamine feed, like The Economist and The New Yorker, are also thriving. Replacing podcasts with audiobooks on my dog walk listen has also gave me pause and perspective.
So my New Year's resolution is every time I open Twitter or Facebook, to ask myself whether I would eat at a McDonald's today.
Every time I find myself scrolling through Facebook, I ask myself "am I here for me, because I really want to be, or am I here for Facebook because they've reward-hacked my motivation subsystem?" That thought in itself is usually enough for me to shrug and close the window.
This is especially important. Twitter has desensitized its users to the point where thousands of people bullying someone into committing suicide doesn't upset anybody. All that recently happened, and it was a wake-up call for me; looking around, nobody actually cared that someone had died, they had all moved on to whatever short-lived meme had taken over.
Leaving Twitter and going to HN, google News, and RSS has definitely been challenging (albeit pretty interesting). It's a lot harder to actually get myself to read articles instead of just headlines, and I've been realizing how short my attention span is because of Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. I wish more people would leave and start using actual news sources again instead of just reading headlines.
So, any recommend blog?