Your interests matter more than your screen time
Social media is not our enemy
In the aftermath of the Kirk assassination, many people whom I respect argued that the problem of political violence and extreme divineness stems from a familiar villain: social media.
People from all over the political aisle have advised others to "touch grass" and take a break from the internet to avoid having their sanity unravel the way some have speculated it did to Tyler Robinson, the guy who shot Kirk.
Pete Buttigieg said, “There’s a clear and obvious relationship between social media and anti-social behavior.”
Sam Harris wrote, “Many seem completely unaware that their hold on reality is being steadily undermined by what they are seeing online [...] Get off social media.”
The Utah governor called social media “cancer.”
However, I’m not sure this is the right diagnosis—nor solution.
These prominent voices, along with many others, seem to default to social media as a kind of root evil. But I think this explanation is too easy. It allows us to skip over the much harder question of why people are drawn to certain kinds of content. Our issue isn't social media; it’s how we think about problems. That’s why I reject the idea that the solution for society is to simply “log off”: it doesn’t confront the reasons for our habits.
The problems we see online don’t magically disappear the moment someone steps outside. The offline world contains all the same dangers: propaganda, harassment, misinformation, bullying, and even criminal behavior. When people say “go outside and look at trees” as a solution, they’re ignoring the problem altogether. And worse: causing people to feel bad about exploring their interests.
We shouldn’t be fleeing from social media and leaving it to the people whose behavior supposedly justifies that retreat. We cannot allow those holding intolerant views to take over the digital public square—any more than we’d allow them to dominate public spaces in the physical world.
What’s needed is a confrontation of what’s wrong with these platforms and work toward shaping them into what we want them to be.
The power of interests
There’s nothing particularly wrong with someone being interested in violent content in the digital world. There’s nothing wrong with people being extreme or divisive online, either.
Blaming the access to violent content isn’t to cast blame on social media, but to blame the interests of individual users. When people’s interests aren’t socially approved, they’re taught to distrust them. Kids understand this better than most. Over time, this instills a reflex: when something interests you, question or suppress it.
That suppression is self-coercion.
Instead of creatively engaging with their interests and learning how to protect themselves from harm, people avoid the problem entirely. They replace curiosity and exploration with guilt and avoidance.
What we see online is a reflection of what people find interesting. That doesn’t mean the content is high quality or true—just that it captures attention. The algorithms serve us, not the other way around. If we want to understand why harmful content spreads, we need to understand why people are drawn to it in the first place. And to do that, we have to stop treating interest itself as suspect by pressuring others to get off social media.
Self-discipline is counterproductive
Interests are motivators. They’re what drive people to solve problems—including the very problems they have with social media.
But for interests to function that way, people need freedom: freedom to explore their ideas, make mistakes, change course, and self-correct. Without that freedom, you get coercion and stagnation. Even when self-imposed, coercion limits people’s capacity to think creatively. And ironically, that ‘self-discipline’ often makes people more likely to fall into the habits they were trying to escape in the first place.
We see this in other areas of life too. Someone might love food but also want to lose weight. That’s not a contradiction—it’s a problem to solve. But instead of exploring creative solutions (like cooking healthier versions of favorite meals), many people attack their own desires to eat. They try to force themselves into rigid plans that collapse, all while they suffer under the self-imposed and self-enforced rulebook.
The same logic applies to social media—or any interest and habit.
Let’s say you believe a close friend is obsessed with social media. How would you offer support?
Would you shame them for using it? Set up traps and punishments? Would you blackmail them into quitting? How many mistakes would you tolerate before escalating to more extreme and violent measures?
Now ask yourself: how do you think your friend would respond to those actions?
The same principle applies to self-coercion. If you're trying to take a break from social media, setting up a system of punishments to block yourself only builds resentment, shame, and confusion about your own motivations—your reasons for being interested in social media.
The consensus solution to log off doesn’t help you figure out why you're drawn to social media, how to make that experience more meaningful, or what it is you’re actually trying to escape. You instead build a box around yourself, preventing you from acting on your lust for fun.
When someone who is feeling isolated and overwhelmed puts themselves in that box, supposedly for their own good, what actually happens to the underlying problems they’re facing? How does one learn anything new about themselves?
The so-called “evils” of social media are still there when you lock yourself in the box. Logging off doesn’t make them go away; it just cuts the person off from one possible avenue for growth, exploration, or even connection right when they may need it most.
If social media explains all behavior; it explains nothing.
It’s true that people online are more likely to say things they wouldn’t otherwise say in person, and that these unsaid things are now being shared and amplified among others, often under the cover of anonymity. People feel isolated, and social media allows them to find communities that provide a sense of belonging and security. If someone feels ashamed of their extreme beliefs, they can now find others who validate them.
I think this has always been true to some extent, but social media has clearly made it easier and more immediate.
There are real problems online when it comes to anonymity and a lack of transparency. Many times, we see hateful or violent rhetoric and later learn it was generated by a Russian or Iranian bot actively trying to divide the nation—politically, culturally, and emotionally. And it works. In some cases, we even have American citizens taking money from the Kremlin; Americans who millions trust and get their information from.
That, to me, is a far bigger problem than the bland, generalized weaponization of “social media,” which lumps together a wide range of platforms, each with different goals, user bases, and impacts.
I don’t think I have all the answers. But one point I want to emphasize is that problems are inevitable, but most importantly, they are solvable.
Telling people to simply avoid being consumed by social media doesn’t help us actually make social media better for those who are isolated. It doesn’t make the platform or the algorithm better either.
Social media is fundamentally a question of correlation versus causation.
People's interests and behaviors require a nuanced, qualitative understanding of why they engage in certain ways. When people explain the actions of someone like Tyler Robinson purely through his obsessive visits to the darker corners of the internet, they miss the broader context. After all, if everyone uses social media, how can it reasonably explain any particular behavior, unless we also accept that it explains nearly all behaviors?
Despite everything, the problems we face with social media may still be preferable to the ones we faced without it. Don’t log off and “touch grass” unless you genuinely want to. Finding new hobbies and in-person communities is a great thing—but only if you’re not forcing yourself into them out of guilt.
If you ever catch yourself demanding that you “just get off social media,” try asking a different question: How can I improve my experience on it?
Thanks for the invitation.
Part of your argument makes sense in that shaming or self punishment is unlikely to actual change behavior.
But I think you are vastly underestimating a few things.
One is that social media consumption is easy and full of short term rewards. That’s one reason it is so habit forming. And for many people addiction forming. Observing my own use and my family’s use, I often see social media use as a temporary break from a task or responsibility, but it doesn’t actual yield an experience of being relaxed or refreshed. And it almost always uses more time than expected.
Second, social media has became less about interacting with people one knows or with people around a shared interest and more about consuming content that one hasn’t selected. Rather it’s been fed to the user by algorithms designed to keep you engaged. Mostly the user is not curating interests or exploring their curiosity.
Third, social media impacts are particularly devastating to young people who are just starting to develop their intellect, morality, judgement, interests, and relationships. They are least able to understand the impacts of social media on themselves and least practiced in how to deal with it. It reminds me a lot of the old smoking campaigns aimed at children because tobacco companies knew the most important thing wasn’t competing against another cigarette brand, it was convincing more people to become smokers.
That said, to tell someone “to touch grass” isn’t helpful. We as individuals, families & organizations need to create community in real life to compete with social media. Invitations to BBQs, parties, dinners, hikes, park district sports, movie nights, and games. People of middle age like myself need to model this behavior for younger adults and young people.
When I heard Buttigieg talk about the problem of social media I don’t think he was blaming users, but I’ve often heard social media use scolded with exasperation. Sometimes I’ve done that myself. That doesn’t help either. The goal is to actually change how Americans interact with social media not just blame others and fulfilling that goal requires listening and generosity.
@Conor Gallogly @Espo In relation to our previous conversation about this. Hope this offers an optimistic perspective for our social media use.