Why Smart People Are Abandoning Social Media | Cal Newport

Earlier this fall, right after the murder of Charlie Kirk, I recorded a monologue on my podcast where I argued why social media was worse than we thought and that maybe now was the time to finally quit. Well, that monologue was really well received and I think it's as relevant right now as it was back then, if not more so. So what I want to do here in this clip I'm about to show you, I'm pulling out that piece of the podcast episode. where i make my my strongest argument against social media and my most intense plea that you should quit it and i'm going to play that for you now uh i think you're going to find it intriguing all right so we need to start our conversation here by defining some terms the phrase social media can mean a lot of things and that creates confusion because you might have one thing in mind and someone else has something else so let's get really specific today i'm going to be referring to a specific class of social apps that i call curated conversation platforms, right? So these are platforms in which you have a lot of people joining in conversation, be it through text images or video using curation algorithms based on optimizing engagement to help select what each individual user sees. So some obvious examples of curated conversation platforms include Twitter and blue sky and threads and Facebook. Those are classic. There's other things that people call social media that don't fit into this particular category. So probably like Pinterest doesn't fall into there. It's not a conversation platform so much as you're looking at things that people posted. Snapchat doesn't fall into here. It's a conversation platform, but it's not algorithmically curated. It's you talking to groups of other people. WhatsApp wouldn't fall into here either. Again, it's not algorithmically curated as conversation, but not a massive platform. And then there's some platforms where depending on how you use them, could fall into this category or not. So I think things like Instagram or YouTube, depending on how you use them, could fall into the category of what we're talking about today or not. So just to be clear about our definitions. Now, I want to focus on curated conversation platforms in particular because I think they lead to uniquely awful harms. I also think they are the social platform most responsible for the rise in violence that we've been seeing recently, be it political. uh or otherwise all right so let's talk about these curated conversation platforms so what are the harms if you ask people hey what's wrong with like twitter blue sky or threads like what are the harms that we care about they'll eventually probably list some combination of the following three things i'll put these up on the screen for those who are watching instead of just listening they're probably going to say okay uh distraction that's a common harm this is the one i talk about a lot in my books on this show It's the idea that there's an addictive element to these platforms so that we use them more than is healthy and to the detriment of other things that we seem to be are important in our life. Another harm people will often mention if you talk about these platforms is demoderation. This is where you begin to lose any sense of moderation around a given issue. It's where you become increasingly strident, see less room for good faith or even basic humanity on the other side of the issue in question. There's a lot of tribalism. When it comes to demoderation, you become part of a tribe that's fighting some sort of epic fight. So because of these stakes, there's a lot of sort of furious policing of your own tribe. The third harm we often hear about these things is what I call disassociation. And this is where things really get scary. This is where you begin to make a complete break from normal associations with human community. You lose connection to normative ethical constraints. This is the state in which violence to others or to yourself becomes a possibility or where you become numbed to seeing such violence being perpetrated against others. There's really two major flavors of dissociation. There's one that's based around overwhelming rage. Well, I am so mad. I have to take action regardless of the consequences. The other flavor of this association where it leads is nihilistic withdrawal. The idea that the world is so dark and unredeemable and meaningless that you might as well cause some chaos on the way out. This nihilistic variation of disassociation is one that we've really been feeling the consequences of recently. Earlier this year, the FBI began using a new term when talking about mass violence incidents. They call it nihilistic violent extremist. It's become so common to have violence caused by a sense of nihilism that there's a new term for it that the FBI uses. Part of the issue with nihilistic withdrawal is that if it is online platforms that have driven you to disassociation, you begin to think, oh, all that matters is attention and respect on online platforms. Here's Derek Thompson writing in an Atlantic piece that he wrote a couple of years ago. For many socially isolated men in particular, for whom reality consists primarily of glowing screens and empty rooms, a vote for destruction is a politics of last result, a way to leave one's mark on a world where collective progress or collective support of any kind feels impossible, right? So online disassociation can lead to violence because you're like, why not? And the only thing that really matters is views. And this will get me attention. All right. So these are the harms that people would normally talk about. If you then say to someone, all right, given these harms of curated conversation platforms, why are you still using them? Why don't more people quit? Well, this is because if you ask people how these harms affect them, they're going to give an answer that looks something like this. And Jesse, we can take this off the screen for now. They'll say something like, I may suffer a bit from distraction. Like most people will cop to that. Yeah, I use these more than is useful, but I could probably get that under control with... you know, some better habits or I can break my phone or something like that. Then they'll say typically, yeah, the demoderation thing, that is a problem, not really for me, but, but for the other, the other tribes, it's like whatever groups I'm affiliated with, like, we're just being reasonable. We're reasonably upset and we're kind of right. But the other, I get it. Other people on the other side, they have problems with demoderation. Probably the fix for that is. depending on what side of the political spectrum I'm on. Maybe it's something about more aggressive content moderation. So if they don't see the crazy stuff, they won't act so demoderated. Or maybe it's a community notes. Like, well, if we could just correct things that are false, then people would be a little bit more reasonable. But that's kind of a other person problem. And then disassociation. Well, people would say, yeah, that's scary for sure. Like, look at these nihilistic extremists. That's scary. But that's not even really happening on the platforms I use. Like when I think about, whenever I hear about these mass shooters, You always hear about them being on like Rumble or Kik or on some sort of like Groyper server on Discord, these sort of weird semi-dark web type platforms. So maybe we should shut those down, but what does that have to do with me? That's sort of how people respond to these harms. And I think that response goes a long way to explaining why we're sort of stuck, why more people aren't making major changes about the role of these technologies in their lives. But here's the thing. Is that interpretation of these harms right? I don't think it is. What I want to do here is outline a different way of understanding how these curated conversation platforms hurt you. And it's going to be a way of understanding them that is not going to let you off the hook so easily. All right, I'm going to do some drawing here, so beware. If you're listening, you might want to turn on the YouTube version to see my brilliant art. All right, so what I have up here on the screen... is the three harms we talked about. Distraction, demoderation, and disassociation. The right way to think about how we interact with these is to imagine that there is a slope. So I'm going to start drawing a slope. I'm going to start, I gotta get my R's hat on. Starting with distraction, we start sloping downhill. And then we'll switch over to demoderation. That slope continues. Then finally, We get to disassociation. That slope continues. And I'm going to draw here a sort of dividing line between, you know, label this here. Mainstream. Oh, look at that handwriting, Jesse. Woo. Mainstream internet on top. Dark web below. All right. So let me explain this beautiful picture I just drew. It's pretty colorful, actually. I give myself a lot of credit for that. It's a slope. sloping downhill. It starts in the distraction zone, then the slope goes through the demoderation zone, and then finally the slope goes through the disassociation zone. I've drawn a ground across this slope diagram. So right around the place we go from demoderation to disassociation, the slope goes underground. Above ground is like mainstream internet. Below ground, now we're in the world sort of of the dark web. So let me explain my model here. When you first start using these type of curated conversation platforms, it's pretty easy to fall onto the slope that is into the zone of distraction. So you sort of fall into the top of the slope where you're like, you know what? I'm using this probably too much. I'm using this a lot. Whatever my platform poison of choice is, I'm kind of on this more that it's healthy, right? Like, oh, this is not good. You know me, I'm addicted to my phone. So we're kind of in that territory. Here's the thing though. You start sliding and you're in this distraction zone long enough. Gravity is going to pull you down into the demoderation portion of the slope and now you're not just using these services too much you're demoderating you're losing your ability to see the other side any sort of good faith you find yourself in dehumanizing tendencies i just hate those people i can't anyone who supports this person i just can't even imagine that right like they are wrong and wait a second wait a second you're on my team you said the wrong thing there don't you realize we have we're at war here We have to close ranks. All that begins to happen. And it gets worse and worse as you slide down the slope. If you continue down the slope and the pressure is pulling here, you'll end up in the disassociation zone where you say, you know what? Screw it, right? The world is unredeemable. And once you're down here is where people bounce off of the primary mainstream platforms. You begin to bounce off those into like whatever mixture of things like Gab or Kick. or rumble. Like now you kind of like end up roaming around these barely regulated sort of wild west, semi-dark web type services. And that's where like the really bad stuff happens. This is, I call this the slope of terribleness. This is actually the right way to understand these harms. They're all connected. You start with one, but gravity is pulling you down towards the next and then towards the next. Now your question might be, can we fix this? Maybe if we just fix these services, there's a way that we can maybe put up some roadblocks on the slope of terribleness and prevent this from happening. But I want to argue that actually, this is not the side effect of some mistakes in the way these services were implemented that can be fixed. But actually, this slope of terribleness and the tendency to slide down it is actually fundamental to how these technologies function. Let me get a little bit into this. All right, let's start with distraction. You start using a curated conversation platform. Part of the problem is the curation means that the algorithm is looking for engaging material. What actually catches your attention? Whatever that is, it will get pretty good at finding that it represents it as sort of weighted data points in a multidimensional space. But it figures out what type of content is engaging for you because that's how they make their money. Now, the issue with this is the stuff you're seeing on the phone is very compelling. This will pretty soon begin to overwhelm your short-term motivation centers in your brain. So we have these circuits in our brain that are making predictions. They're looking at activities that are available to you in the moment, and they're making predictions based off past learning. What are the different outcomes going to be of these various short-term activities? And if the brain has learned, oh, there's a really positive outcome that's going to happen from a particular activity, you get a flood of dopamine in that motivation circuit, which activates it and then makes that that activity seemed irresistible, right? This is something we often get wrong about dopamine. I noticed this in like the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox's comments in the aftermath of the Kirk assassination. A lot of people think of dopamine as a pleasure chemical of like, oh, once you do something, you get a splash of dopamine and it feels good. No, no, it's a motivation chemical. So these short-term motivation circuits have learned through past experience. For example, when I eat that cookie, there's all of these things I feel that are good. And the circuits learn from that. And they say, great. When I see a cookie again, dopamine will activate that circuit because that circuit recognizes the cookie and give me a sense of intense motivation to eat it. Well, algorithmically curated content really plays to those circuits very well. And if you're using the phone all the time, you build a very strong prediction circuit that when it says a phone is nearby. dopamine dopamine dopamine in that circuit saying pick up that phone and look at it we're going to see something that's going to cause a reaction that's interesting be it pleasurable or outrage but it's going to be interesting an interesting reaction that is very very strong and the problem is the phone is always with you so that circuit is just constantly being bathed in dopamine it becomes very very hard you can resist it sometimes But it becomes very hard to consistently resist it. So you go back to using those services again and again and again. That's just a basic sort of feedback reinforcement loop. It would be like trying to quit cigarettes. You're like, look, I don't want to smoke, but I'm going to carry in my hand at all times a pack of cigarettes that's right there. That's a very hard way to cut back on smoking because those circuits are constantly being bathed in dopamine saying that will give us a reward. You need to smoke it. All right. So just fundamental brain chemistry. You have algorithmically curated content accessible in your hand at all times. you're going to use that more than you want to. So that's how you begin sliding down that distraction slope as soon as you begin in any sort of regular way using one of these curated platforms. Why does this bring us into demoderation? Well, two things happen with these platforms once you start using them all the time. Another side effect of the algorithmic curation is the echo chamber effect. And we say this sort of loosely like, oh, don't be in an echo chamber, but I'm saying it in a sort of a techno determinist sort of way. It is a unavoidable side effect of an algorithmically curated information experience. The way these algorithms actually work, and I don't want to be too technical, but basically they have these huge multi-dimensional points. So just large vectors of numbers that's described as an embedding of content into, think of it as like a bunch of little descriptions. I have a thousand categories I can use when I'm trying to describe something. And I take a thing and I go through and give it a number in each of these categories. And that combination like describes it really well. And what it does is it learns spaces, the multidimensional spaces in which these preference vectors exist. It sort of learns these regions where content here does really well with this person that creates an echo chamber. I mean, it's not, no one's sitting there programming. create echo chamber, execute, or there's an echo chamber knob. It is just an unavoidable consequence of using this type of, I'm going to observe your engagement and then use that to try to figure out where in the space of possible content things create the most engagements. You're going to start seeing a lot of stuff that's similar. So if there's something you lean towards on an issue, you're going to be seeing a lot more of stuff about that side of the issue. And you're going to see stuff that's more and more engaging within that space, which typically would be the stuff that's a little bit more strident. We like that. Okay. The other issue is, so we're hearing kind of the same stuff, algorithmic echo chamber. These are conversation platforms. Remember I mentioned it's important that it's people conversing, not just like you consuming content from experts. That is going to fire up in your mind the tribal community circuits. Yeah, these are these people that we're talking back and forth. I'm in community, the social circuits come up. So you have echo chambers plus tribal community circuits fired up. And these things come together and they create in your mind, this virtual tribe that has a very strong cause. That's where demoderation comes from. It's not a lack of willpower on your point. It's not a sort of knob that can be turned in the algorithms that run these social networks. It is a unescapable consequence of how these platforms function. Those tribal community circuits are incredibly powerful because throughout most of our modern history as a homo sapien, so let's go back two to 300,000 years, this is how we survive. Our tribe was everything. The other tribes, we had to be very, very suspicious of it. You are not from my tribe. My tribe is what matters. If you're not, I worry that you're going to kill me or steal our food. I do not like you. There's nothing more compelling than those tribal community circuits. You can think of the entire history of human civilization. Yuval Harari is good about how we used abstractions to do this. It's an effort to try to overcome the tribal community circuits that are so deep in our mind. And this is basically the point of the book Sapiens, if you want to sort of go down a rabbit hole here, is that humans' abilities to organize around abstract causes in tribes basically hijacked our tribal circuits and allowed us to expand the scope to which they applied them. So now they could apply to like our entire country or everyone who shares a religion as what allowed humans to work together in large numbers, which was key to our success. That is Yuval Harari's argument. But the point is, our success came from figuring out how do we actually like hijack, overwhelm, or otherwise redirect these tribal circuits because they are so strong. Purated conversation platforms just get back to paleolithic, let's go, right? And that's where that demoderation is so strong. And it's not because, oh, that's a bug in the system. We need to turn that off so I can get the real value out of these platforms. It is the value for most people. That is what's creating the most engagement. That's the thing that's feeding into the addiction loop on it. So it's very difficult to avoid demoderation if you're using these things a lot. All right, but now here's the problem. The more increasingly demoderated you get, and look in the mirror, you know you are, like whatever issue it is you care about. These tribes are almost, by the way, random what you end up echo chambered in. It's like your slight preferences plus whatever the algorithm pushed you in. Like it can be pretty arbitrary, but just think about right now. whether it's political and you're on the left and thinking about MAGA people, or you're on the right and you're thinking about the blue hair people, or you're a super health mom who's thinking about, man, these pharmaceutical companies are poisoning my kids because they don't care, or whatever the issue is. Think about the push to dehumanize that other group. Man, they're just terrible. Look at the stuff I'm reading. I just cannot imagine. how they exist. When you are in that mindset, you keep sliding down the slope of terribleness. That is what eventually gets you to disassociation because you get to a point where you say, the other thing, the side I don't like is so terrible and yet nothing is happening about it. We're not cutting off half the country or whatever it is. They're not seeing that I'm just right and changing their views to align with mine and no one seems to care. uh, or whatever the issue is and it nihilism, either nihilism or rage follows. Like I just, I can't fathom this. And it sort of breaks it to make matters worse, especially if you're younger, a side effect of a conversation platform is that it's taking the place of actual human interaction. So you're also going to become more actually socially isolated. So huge demoderation plus more of social isolation, whether you're young, this also happens a lot with older people as well, who are sort of retired and older in life. Man, that gets you to disassociation. Before you know it, you're showing up at Comet Pizza. Someone's got to free the kids from the secret caves underneath, or you're a nihilistic shooter. One thing leads to another, and it is built into the technology. So we can't fix this. This is not... There's no version of Twitter that doesn't have this because the point is, is the two things that drive this is the fact that it's people coming together. It's virtual interaction that is algorithmically curated. You turn it off. You don't have those services. You can't have a version of those services without a conversation and algorithmic curation. That is the service. That's like saying to Pizza Hut, look, we don't want to put you out of business, but is there a way you can exist without selling pizza? Like that's what we do. right? This is what these conversational algorithmic platforms do. You have a huge number of people come together onto a platform to have conversation. You have to have algorithmic curation because what else are you going to do? You have 500 million people submitting tweets a day. You have to curate it. And if you're going to curate it, you're going to curate it on like what people want to see. And you put those forces together, you slide down the slope of terrible. So there is no technological fix to this. It is a unavoidable side effect of these technologies. All right. So you're probably saying yes, but I'm not going to end up at the bottom of this slope. I've used these things. Most people don't. A lot of people use these services, but they don't end up on, you know, Rumble or Grouper Discord servers, right? And it's true. You can resist the pull of gravity. But let's think about what that costs. I'm going to bring up this picture one more time on here. So we have the slope of terribleness here. So yes, I'm going to draw a little picture here. It is true. You can You know, at some point, hold on. I don't know. Does that look like a mountain climber holding on, Jesse? Yeah. Doing something. All right. So you can arrest your fall at some point, but here's the issue. There's two issues with this, right? Number one, imagine over here we have a scale. Think about this as like a scale of flourishing, right? The higher up you're on the scale, the more you're flourishing as a human. I'll label that flourishing. I'll pull that down there. So here's the problem. Yes, you stop yourself somewhere on the slope of terribleness, but the farther you've gone down, the lower you've gone down on the scale of flourishing. So maybe you arrest your stop somewhere here in the demoderation area, but you've arrested your life in a place that's worse. You're flourishing less than if you weren't on the slope at all. To make matters worse, resisting further slide down this slope requires a lot of mental energy. To not be demoderated when you're using the services all the time requires like a real application of will. When you're demoderated, not to make that final slide towards disassociation requires a lot of will. To be fully disassociated and resist the call to come join other disassociated people who understand your disaffection on these sort of dark web type services, that takes a lot of mental energy. So yes, you can maybe prevent yourself, and most people do, of course, from getting to the bottom of the slope of terribleness, but they get stuck in a place where they have reduced flourishing and it's eating up a lot of mental energy that you could otherwise be spending on stuff that matters to you more. in your life. So why is this worth it to be less happy and to waste huge amounts of mental energy needed to prevent yourself from descending into what is essentially a sort of living hell? Once you realize the real dynamics at play here, it becomes hard to justify why you're still spending time with these curated conversational platforms. So you want to stay up to date on the news? Subscribe to actual media. You want to hear information that you think is otherwise being suppressed? All right. subscribe to newsletter, subscribe to the podcast, do the old fashioned work of here is a real individual. Here is why I think they are a good person to listen to. Here is their credentials. Here's how they convinced me. And I will listen to them writing out a thing once a week and there's no curation and it's not conversation. Great. Do that. The internet can help you here. You don't have to be on the curated conversation platforms. You want to be a part of something. That's great. Being on those platforms just tricks you into thinking you're a part of something. You're not. You imagine often if you're engaged in combat on these platforms, you imagine you're at the front of the crowd marching on that bridge from Selma. In reality, you're in an attention factory, punching with your time clock while your billionaire overseers laugh as their net worth goes up due to your efforts. You want to be a part of something, actually go be a part of something, not on a screen. And maybe you're using it because you're bored? Find better entertainment. Even on your phone, there's better high quality entertainment. Do whatever. Literally almost anything else. I know it presses these buttons. Find other things to press the buttons. You can listen to podcasts, read newsletters, read books, watch movies. You have streaming media. You have literally something like a half a trillion dollars worth of CapEx expense and entertainment available at your fingertips for like $30 a month. Like there's plenty of other things you can do to not be bored that doesn't put you on the slope of terribleness. All right. So that's the way I see these things. So why don't we do here? like we always do, is move on to our takeaways section. Jesse, we have a little takeaway music here? We do. Let's hear this. All right, so let's get to my takeaways here. When it comes to these curated conversation platforms, we've been telling ourselves a reassuring story. Yeah, they're not great, but most of the worst harms don't impact me, and there's some nice benefits. What's the rush to change? But in reality, these harms are all connected to a common slope of terribleness. You use them and you'll start sliding down this slope. It'll make your life worse as you move further. You'll likely stop yourself eventually before you get to the hellish bottom, but this resistance requires energy, mental energy. You could be spending on things that matter or people you love. This trade-off is not worth it. I want to end this deep dive by reading from the conclusion of the essay that I published on my newsletter a couple of weeks ago. Here's how I ended that essay. To save civil society, We need to end our decade long experiment with curated conversation platforms. We tried them. They became dark and awful. It's time to move on. Enough is enough. Hey, if you liked this video, I think you'll really like this one as well. Check it out.

Cal Newport explains why smart people are abandoning social media in this deep dive from a prior podcast episode. Cal puts on his technology critic hat and offers a step-by-step technical explanation for why these platforms are strictly and incessantly making your life worse and why the only reasonable response is to quit them.

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1:00 Curated conversation platforms
 7:20 A way to understand conversation platforms
20:03 Social isolation

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About Cal Newport:
Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University. In addition to his academic research, he writes about the intersection of digital technology and culture. Cal's particularly interested in our struggle to deploy these tools in ways that support instead of subvert the things we care about in both our personal and professional lives.

Cal is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including, most recently, A World Without Email, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. He's also the creator of The Time-Block Planner.

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