Can an app change your life?
No, really. (Plus some film/book/music recommendations for paid subscribers)
Social media is a delight for inquisitive people, and a boon to the nosy. Download any app and you can get lost in multiple warrens of revelations, ideas, images and outpourings.
But what is all this absorption doing to us?
Since I first started using chat rooms in the late 1990s, paying a few quid for a 10-minute slot ‘surfing the web’1, the internet’s many iterations of social connection have had a hold on me. Even back in college, in the post-millennium days of bulletin boards and forums, I spent more time in the computer labs in the Boole posting about music than using the internet for study.
My interest came because I am, admittedly, very nosy/curious (there’s a reason I like getting paid to interview people). But it’s also because my digital life often felt bigger, more interesting and with more potential than ‘real life’. In my digital life, I got to show the ‘world’ who I was, and I got to talk/write about things I was interested in. No permission from parents or adults needed.
Changes
Social media has added a huge amount to my life, from friends (last weekend, I met up with a gang of people who all connected on Twitter over a decade ago) to my first book.
But inevitably, as social media has undergone its manifold changes - not least Twitter/X becoming a site where you’re highly likely to step into a racist cesspit accidently - I’ve changed how I feel about the time I want to spend on there.
I began to really pay attention over the last few years to what sort of impact social media had on my mind, my thoughts and even my actions. I realised that the most impactful site, in terms of its impact vs how powerless I was to not spend huge amounts of time on it, was Instagram.
Looking for a book about the impact of social media on Ireland? Might I suggest my bestselling and Irish Book Awards-nominated non-fiction book Social Capital? Order it from your favourite online store - or pick it up in your local bookshop.
Not that Instagram in itself is bad. Just like all social media apps, it’s both brilliant and has the potential for issues. But my incessant checking of it was definitely problematic. I realised that my brain just wasn’t built to cope with multiple checks of the app every day and the scrolls through the streams of information it would feed me.
When I stood back and analysed it, I saw that as a sensitive person it really wasn’t a great idea to be constantly on an app where I could compare myself to others, and which could introduce worries as soon as I clicked in.
It didn’t matter that I knew that Instagram is a highlights reel, and that it’s for showing the (mostly) good things that have happened to us. That I understood it’s all about sharing the conclusion to a narrative, the result of hard work rather than all the graft it took to get that book published, or that holiday abroad, or [insert life change here].
In a very basic sense, Instagram is like flipping through a photo album - but of all the days you achieved something, looked amazing, or were at your most popular/creative/focused.
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about the impact of what we see on social media on ourselves. I’ve read Frances Haugen’s whistleblowing reports, read research, and, well,s wrote a book about social media. I’ve read books about the attention economy, and about how our data is used, and about the issues caused by the biggest social networks.
And yet I still checked Instagram in particular multiple times a day, witnessing myself scrolling through photos that for the most part (especially the more time I spent scrolling) added nothing to my day. More time on the app just meant diminishing results.
A solution?
In my last newsletter, I mentioned the app Clearspace, and so it might seem strange to dedicate an entire newsletter to this app again2, but I wanted to explain more about why it’s been gamechanging.
Now, I can only visit Instagram on my phone in three daily 10-minute slots (I can visit it on my laptop, but the visits are brief - the platform works best on the app). With my time restricted, those 10 minutes feel so long that I often click out before the minutes are up.
It astounds me that I actually could and did spend hours and hours scrolling the app most days. Since I started using Clearspace, I feel like part of my brain has become calmer, leaving space for creativity to seep through. I had felt part of my mind had been colonised by social media, but it’s strange to realise exactly how much.
Crucially, I now don’t spend precious, precious time looking at Reels, which are the absolute worst part of Instagram for me - the algorithm shifted in 2023 to make it a place for virality, so I was being served absolutely ludicrous Reels constantly.
Of course, I miss out on things by not being on Instagram so much. My siblings all live abroad and so I’m not as up to date on what my sisters in particular are doing every day; I miss what some friends are up to; I don’t get to look at all the Stories I used to. But I can message people from my laptop, and can post Stories when I access the app. When I’m on Instagram now, I’m more likely to respond to a Story or post, because I want to connect rather than scroll.
Of course, I still have WhatsApp to contact people. Plus, overall I still get to check what I want on Instagram. I just no longer regularly fall into a rabbit hole where I end up watching 370 Reels about how a Christ-worshipping mom of 15 feeds her brood.
Don’t depend on willpower
A few weeks ago, I talked to the lovely Catherine Price (who has an excellent newsletter and a fantastic book called How to Break Up With Your Phone) for an article on how to spend less time on social media (and your phone) for the Sunday Times ‘Home’ supplement.
We had a great chat, and the main thrust of her message was that in order to spend less time on social media, you can’t rely on willpower to help. This made me relieved, as I blamed myself for constantly checking apps. As Catherine explained, they’re basically slot machines in your pocket. I was only doing what the app makers wanted (checking constantly) and what my brain liked (getting regular dopamine hits).
She also underlined how, really, it is much more preferable to spend time in the ‘real world’ than online - and she’s even written a book about fun, to help make people’s offline lives more appealing.
Of course, we can’t pretend that making connections with people online isn’t deeply meaningful (I have made so many friends this way), or that there isn’t ‘content’ on social media that is important and could only be broadcast on that forum. Without Motaz Azaiza or Bisan sharing their experiences from Gaza on Instagram, I’d be a lot more ignorant about what’s going on there.
I don’t want to totally sit out what’s happening on social media, but I want to only give it as much time as it deserves, to take what I need from it, properly connect with people I want to connect with and then have the freedom to go live the rest of my life.
There’s a certain sort of headache I get when I’ve been browsing social media too much: a dull, nauseating ache. I felt it yesterday, when I was mindlessly scrolling through a few news apps to try and get a dopamine fix (I’ll always want the dopamine hit that scrolling gives, I just am better at recognising it when it’s happening).
It was my sign to put the bloody phone down. I realised that since downloading Clearspace, I have only had that feeling a handful of times, and only for a brief period. Previously, it would trail after me for the day, making me feel uncomfortable and bloated with information.
While researching for the Sunday Times article, I also came across some interesting research which backed up my positive experience with less social media use:
An experimental study called The Effect of Self-Monitoring Limited Social Media Use on Psychological Well-Being, by researchers from Iowa State University (published last year in Technology, Mind and Behaviour) looked at the impact of cutting social media use down to 30 minutes a day. After two weeks, the self-monitored group who limited intake “showed significant improvements in their psychological well-being”.
You might be the opposite of me, someone who doesn’t need social media hits and who can easily click in and out of the apps. But they’re created to make us hear the siren’s call and reach our thumbs towards that shiny square on our phone screen.
To be sucked in easily to social media is something that is so common that it’s not really talked about a lot, I’ve found. We all know it’s happening to us, but I don’t know if we really spend enough time analysing how social media makes us feel or how we’re impacted by it. It gives us so much, and it’s free, that it feels churlish to complain. But if you find your usage problematic, it’s worth teasing out why, and to figure out what approach to social media works for you.
To answer my question: Can an app change your life? Well, it can certainly change your behaviour, and make life that bit better.
There can be a danger of appearing smug when you say you’re spending less time on social media. It can come off like you see yourself as better than others, or that you look down your nose at those who won’t, can’t, or don’t need to reduce their time. But for me at least, I don’t feel remotely smug about finding some way to make my use of Instagram more targeted and useful to me rather than Meta. I feel relieved.
Recommendations
I’d like to post some paid subscriber-only content, but I also don’t want people to feel under any pressure at all to pay to subscribe, so for now I’m keeping it to recommendations.
As a thank you to those who pay for subscriptions (which means that I am able to take time during my work day to write these newsletters, for which I’m very grateful), here are my latest recs. If you’re a subscriber and have feedback on this, please let me know.
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