Social Media Escape Club

The internet and numbers and bots cannot and will not translate to real tangible communities. We get carried away by the fog that is the internet and its illusions, forgetting that there exists a physical, tangible reality, a reality that we must engage with.

Recalling the specifics now, I can see more clearly exactly what’s being lost. Scrolling displaces observation, shuts out occasions for self-generated thought, silences out-of-the-blue invitations. Checking the phone reroutes the discomfort of blankness and emptiness. It stoppers authentic—often anxious—waiting.

If you watch television for 8 hours in a row, you might feel that you watched too much television. You would have a feeling that you wanted to get up and go do something else. Smart-phones specifically, unlike any other previous screen, are located on the body and taken everywhere. Without a conscious disconnnection practice, there is no getting up

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Online is meant to aid in our reality, not be it

Exploring the internet together should be like exploring a vast old library with your friends. Wandering down different shelves, skimming the pages that catch your eye, and occasionally one of you hollers in a whispering voice, "come check this out!"

If I wake up and touch my phone, I’ve already lost hours. Not because I’m browsing social media for hours, but because the mind has already been agitated, made unquiet, and the context switch back into thoughtfulness can take the whole morning. In other words, the addict part of my brain takes over and contaminates my ability to be contemplative. I... See more