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The privilege of being offline

It’s self promotion on steroids. I don’t want to do it anymore. But can we afford not to?

Molly added 4mo

I love social media (obviously, I write this newsletter). But there are days when I blast through my TikTok time limit and am left feeling exhausted. So much of my job (and most jobs these days) are wrapped up in staying relevant with what’s going on in the world — constantly up to date, dialed in, on the pulse. Despite the fun times I have online,

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Newport Institute, a young adult mental health inpatient treatment center, has recently begun recruiting people suffering from “brainrot.” On its website, the Institute encourages parents whose children suffer from “screen dependency” and “digital addiction” to consider treatment plans at one of its locations across the country.

Jessica Roy • If You Know What ‘Brainrot’ Means, You Might Already Have It

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During the song’s crescendo, Joel sings: “Slow down you crazy child / Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while / It’s alright you can afford to lose a day or two.” Good advice in 1977, maybe, but not entirely possible in 2024.

“That’s this really romantic thought, because you can’t really do that nowadays,” Keaton said. “You can turn yo... See more

Alaina Demopoulos • ‘No One Understands a Woman in Her 20s Like Billy Joel’: Gen Z Finds Solace in Anti-Hustle Anthem Vienna

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Digital hygiene as a solution?

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I’m not getting off TikTok. But there’s a reason why I prefer more creative mediums of self expression like Substack as a platform for brand building. It feels less like you’re feeding yourself to the algorithmic beast in hopes of achieving some ill-sought after goal

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Maybe it’s the people who are less online that are the happiest too

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I’ve always joked that the people who post the most about their partner and their relationship on social media are usually the least happy.

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Does anyone actually even enjoy being online, all the time? When social presence turns from what it used to be (connection, community, sharing) to what it is now (self promotion, personal branding) has it lost its shine?

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But by embedding tech and social media into everyday life without fixing the inequalities that still undermine that everyday life, we’ve built a “solution” that actually highlights—and will start to reinforce—fundamental problems of inequality.

The privilege of logging off

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