Algorithms are the new cigarettes. Is it possible to quit cold turkey?
Life on the other side of rage-induced doomscrolling? It's real. And it's spectacular.
Thumbnail image courtesy of Ravi Kant.
Given I will no longer be promoting my work via any social media algorithms (including Substack Notes) for the reasons written about below, I now choose to rely on word-of-mouth support from generous readers like you. If this article brings even a little clarity to your otherwise chaotic day, consider sharing this with friends who could use a little more analog in their digital lives.
I recently celebrated my 46th birthday, which means that with all likelihood I have more time behind me than ahead of me. (Mid-life crisis, anyone?) Given both my father and grandfather were fortunate enough to die of natural causes in their early eighties, best-case scenario I have another forty years before shuffling off this mortal coil. To ensure my remaining four decades on this earth bring value to the world, I’ve spent the second half of this year slowing things down and exploring what it would mean to live as a digital essentialist.
Digital essentialism is about embracing the modern technologies that serve my goals, enhance the quality of my work and life, and allow me to spend my time in alignment with my values (with my most important core value being presence). And my quest to become a digital essentialist has been about taking a hard look at my current relationship with technology to see where I am serving it rather than it serving me.
The simplest and most obvious conclusion I have come to thus far?
Social media has been poisonous to my mental and emotional health.
And algorithms are the new cigarettes.
Which begs the question…
Is living algorithm-free even possible?
For the technologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and the all-around nerds, yes I know algorithms¹ are embedded in virtually every aspect of our modern lives from Amazon recommendations and Google Maps traffic projections to our home security systems and even our smart refrigerators.
The TL;DR → Short of living deep in the mountains and going 100% off-grid, no I don’t believe it’s possible to live algorithm-free in today’s society. And frankly, who would even want to?!
My quest to live a more present life as a digital essentialist is not about becoming a Luddite or living like the Amish devoid of cars, electricity, phones, or the internet.
This quest is about intentionally designing my work and life so that technology—specifically the algorithms—are my servants, NOT my masters.
I’m fine with the algorithms that serve as useful tools to enhance the quality of my creative work (but I stop short of letting technology do the creative work for me), that can help automate and simplify the tasks that drain my energy or are redundant, and those that make my day-to-day life easier (e.g. Amazon product recommendations or alternate traffic routes via Google Maps).
I’m not fine with allowing algorithms into my life that are intentionally designed to maximize my enragement engagement or that hinder my ability to function as an emotionally balanced human being (e.g. ALL social media apps and news feeds). And I’m also no longer fine with publishing “content” (even high quality educational content) that keeps people passively enraged engaged with an algorithmically-curated ecosystem designed to poison our hearts and minds 24/7.
I began casually exploring this alternate path to modern living earlier this summer as I realized how much time I was losing to mindless scrolling (and how that was leading to increased anxiety and friction with my family). But this quest to eliminate ALL the content algorithms from my life did not begin in earnest until the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated. That was the day I realized online discourse is beyond repair, and despite not adding to the conversation myself, I was nonetheless ashamed to be in attendance at the global town square.
Having both lived my life and run my online education business for the past two months 99% free of mindless, algorithmically-induced scrolling, I can unequivocally say I AM NEVER GOING BACK.
Life on the other side is real. And it’s spectacular.
I read more.
I sleep better.
I’m less anxious.
I’m more effective with my time.
And I feel more connected and present with the most important people around me.
It’s almost as if we used to live this way before the world wide web.
I remember when we were so much better than this.
I belong to a distinguished group known as the “Xennials,” (the mini-generation sandwiched between Generation X and Millenials), the final generation to spend its formative years growing up in the analog world, raised without wi-fi. I spent endless hours conquering Super Mario, Zelda, and Mike Tyson devoid of screen time limits or helicopter parents. My summers were spent riding bikes in the streets miles from home, eating from metal lunch boxes (with a side of tetanus), drinking from the garden hose, and making crank calls from rotary phones before there was any caller ID or *69.
We didn’t have the internet in our home until my sophomore year of high school, and the 28.8 kbps dial-up connection was so insufferably slow that you made a sandwich while your page loaded. (Waiting for porn was excruciating.)
I didn’t have an email address until my senior year of high school.
I didn’t own an analog cell phone until my junior year of college, and it was only pre-loaded with enough minutes for road emergencies.
My life was devoid of social media news feeds until I (reluctantly) joined Facebook in 2008.
And it wasn’t until 2010 that I finally caved and bought the iPhone 3G which allowed me to have 24/7 access to my email, the world wide web, and all of mankind’s collective knowledge in the palm of my hands...even while taking a shit.
Before the internet, life was simpler. The days were slower. People were kinder. And we weren’t angry, anxious, miserable fucking human beings.
ALL. THE. FUCKING. TIME.
Decades from now when historians dissect the dumpster fire that is this decade (and we still have five years to go!), there will be a multitude of inflection points considered just as pivotal to our historical timeline as when Biff stole Gray’s Sports Almanac.
March 11th, 2020 - The day Covid-19 was declared a pandemic and we all went into global lockdown.
February 24th, 2022 - The day2 Russia invaded Ukraine and triggered World War III.
September 10th, 2025 - The assassination of Charlie Kirk.
But in order to truly understand how we have become a society of angry, anxious, and miserable people who only see the world in the black & white terms of “us” and “them,” we must also acknowledge another inflection point I would argue has altered the space time continuum - or at the very least our ability to function as a civil society - just as much (or even more?) than the three events above:
September 20th, 2011 - The day Facebook introduced their algorithmically-curated News Feed.
The early days of “Web 2.0” and social media really did bring us together.
We connected directly with writers and artists we admired in the comments sections of their blogs and we built online communities in forums.
We caught up with old friends and shared pictures on Facebook.
We shared important moments from our day (and our breakfast) on Instagram.
We had the opportunity to follow interesting, relevant, and previously inaccessible people we admired on Twitter.
And nobody used LinkedIn for anything other than an online résumé (if at all).
Social media was far from perfect even in the early days, but it really did feel like for a short time we had free access to a global town square where we could exchange ideas, have engaging discussions, help each other solve problems, and ultimately connect with people we would never have the opportunity to connect with otherwise.
Social media was something we “checked in on” by scrolling through news feeds curated in reverse chronological order with only the content we chose to follow and the people we chose to friend. After 15 minutes you’d feel like you were “caught up,” and you moved on with your day.
And that was it.
But as we became increasingly overwhelmed by the amount of “content” we had to keep up with (FOMO!!!) - and as Big Tech realized it could only keep acquiring users for so long until they needed a clear path to profitability that maximized shareholder value - there was only one inevitable next step:
Content curated by the algorithms, not the humans.
Big Tech has won the race to the bottom of our brain stems.
Fast-forward to today, and less than half of the content we consume on the major social platforms is even from people or profiles we ever chose to follow in the first place. We’re instead fed an endless stream of largely AI-generated junk food that might satisfy in the moment but ultimately leaves us feeling emotionally hungry, or even worse completely empty inside (and needing a cold shower). And the most dominant, widely used, and most addictive platform of them all - TikTok - doesn’t even require you to follow anyone. Immediately after setting up a new account, the algorithm feeds you mind-numbing “content” so it can can learn at lightning speed how to keep you and your thumbs engaged (and enraged) for the longest period of time possible. Now with OpenAI entering the arena with their Sora app will come the exponential rise of AI slop to capture even more of our limited time and attention. (So far the utter garbage coming out of Sora makes TikTok dances look like The Bolshoi Ballet.)
For those not following the Idiocracy timeline, WE ARE HERE. 👇
In between the mind-numbing garbage turning us into drooling zombies, we’re bombarded with endless advertisements for useless shit we don’t need, “influencers” who tell us how to live our lives while practicing none of what they preach, and “growth hackers” imploring us to optimize every aspect of our work and lives. But worst of all is the endless stream of vitriolic hatred amplified by the algorithms to maximize our enragement engagement. And it’s all fed to the center of our brain stems for the low low price of $0 per month.
Public service announcement: Social media is anything but free.
To paraphrase Cal Newport, the NYT bestselling author of Digital Minimalism:
“We are unpaid workers toiling all day at the attention factory.”
Our “free” social media is costing us our time, our energy, our ability to focus, our ability to be present with those around us, and most importantly it’s costing us our mental and emotional health. As the loneliness epidemic grows larger every day, for many who have lost all hope, social media is literally costing them their lives.
I’m opting out. And so should you.
🎧 Listen to my podcast with Cal Newport discussing Digital Minimalism
You don’t need to quit cold turkey. But I bet something needs to change?
Every week I ask my students in The Arnold Academy to reflect on the deeper questions we’re often too busy to answer. One week I asked the following:
What do you want more of in your life? And what do you want less of?
(🎩 Hat tip to for these fantastic prompts!)
Every single student who responded unequivocally said they needed less doomscrolling and social media in their lives.
We’re past the point of debating whether or not social media is good or bad. Now we’re just to figure out how to extricate ourselves from this digital nightmare without missing out on the value social media has brought to our relationships and our lives.
If you’re curious about how to change your relationship with technology and live more intentionally as a digital essentialist, stay tuned for part 2 of this series where I’ll break down every tactical detail of how I manage the algorithms in both my work and life so they become my servants and not my masters.
Before you go, I’d love to know…
If you had to delete one app from your life, which would you choose and why?
1 An algorithm, in the context of digital platforms and social media, is a set of programmed rules that “learns” from your personal data—your clicks, likes, watch time, and other behaviors—to predict what you’ll want to see next. It doesn’t think like a human, but it imitates intelligence by constantly adjusting its recommendations based on patterns it detects across millions of users, optimizing not for truth or meaning, but for engagement. (Author’s Note: This definition is provided in collaboration with ChatGPT...yes, I’m aware of the irony).
2 I realize the historical timeline of Russia’s invasion(s) of Ukraine is infinitely more complicated. For the sake of simplicity I’ve chosen this date as its the most recent of the invasions.
I don't use X at all or Facebook except for the marketplace but I would like to delete Instagram just because I get so lost in it. BUT it's become like the LA Weekly in that I can find out what is going on around town, art shows, music, community events. I honestly wish there was a paid version where I could see just what I want to see, like subscribing to a newspaper (a newspaper that my friends are in)
First delete Facebook- I only keep it for the work contacts. Next Instagram- I spend so much time on there but I can’t quit. LinkedIn- I feel like I need to be on there while I’m hustling for a job. And most of AI but I feel it’s unavoidable.