your life will get better if you stop scrolling - #056

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Pretty much the only online interaction that I have on a regular basis is via text and through YouTube and discord. I am by far the most isolated from other people that I've ever been in my entire life. My friend circle has shrunk down to include a handful of friends, many of which I very rarely see in real life. The only people that I really talk to over the phone on a regular basis are my girlfriend, my friend Frank and some family members. I'm not exaggerating when I say that's pretty much 90% of what my recent calls and text are on a regular basis. I'm not exaggerating when I say that's pretty much 90% of what my recent calls and texts are. On paper, I should be the loneliest I've ever been because I'm socializing the least that I've ever socialized. In reality, I feel the most content with my own life that I ever have. My days feel two to three times longer than they did when I was spending a lot of time scrolling or trying to keep up with what everybody else is doing. Now that I'm kind of just living my life on my own and focusing on the things that bring me joy, I really feel like I'm in the best place mentally that I've ever been. I used to not even be able to walk my dog without looking at things on my phone. I used to wake up and check my email right away every single day for no reason or open Instagram within the first two minutes of me sitting down to eat breakfast because I was bored and I needed something to do while I ate. I mean, be honest in the comments. Do you watch YouTube or do anything on your phone while you eat breakfast every day? You probably do and you may be eating right now while you're watching or listening to this video, but no shame. That's fine though, because it's normal, right? You wouldn't question why your grandfather was reading the paper back in the 1960s every morning when he drank his coffee. This really isn't any different. Well, sorry to break it to you, but it is. That daily newspaper helped maybe like 20 or 25 different pieces of information that your grandpa was able to read slowly every single morning to understand what was going on in his area, his country, and maybe a handful of other places in the world that are directly related to his area or country. After he read that, his information diet for the day was done. That was pretty much all of his external information that he was taking in every single day, and he can go about his work or his hobbies without constantly thinking about additional things that kept popping up throughout the day. That newspaper reading was therapeutic in a way. He got his mind going, got him thinking about some things that he could maybe talk to other people in the real world as he passed them on the street. Then he went about his business in his real physical environment and lived a normal life that was existing almost entirely in the present moment. I'd say that was a pretty normal way to live. Now imagine if that same grandpa viewers got a new newspaper delivered to his exact location in real time every two minutes throughout his entire day. The newspapers would slowly pile up, and by the end of the day he'd probably have a panic attack thinking that the world is going to end. That therapeutic act of reading a paper to get the day started would slowly become extremely unenjoyable, and by the end of his experience he'd probably want to avoid newspapers altogether. The way that you and I consume information in the 21st century is no different than this, and the one newspaper every few minutes is probably an extreme understatement compared to the amount of information that we receive on a regular basis. There are estimates that the average American sees between 2,500 and 5,000 ads every single day by noon. Halfway through the day, you've probably consumed more information through advertisements alone than your grandpa did in an entire week, maybe an entire month. Then you add news and updates and posts and gossip and drama and discussions and tweets and snapchats and all this other information. No wonder everybody's feeling stressed out, anxious and detached from reality. Most people aren't even living in reality. They're spending a majority of their waking hours staring into a portal that shows everything happening everywhere all at once, and then we wonder why we feel like we don't belong in this world. It's not natural to know all of this stuff. To know every war, every conflict, everything that every politician says, what every friend is doing, every movie and game that's coming out, what random people in the internet are saying about random things that also don't matter. Living in the moment is something you have to actively seek out now instead of it being the natural state of existing. Because of all of this, the noise is deafening and the world around us ceases to exist. You don't know your neighbors, you don't know your co-workers, you don't know what types of plants are outside your window, you don't know the different species of birds landing on your fence. I'm sorry I've been so obsessed with birds lately, I just can't help it. You don't know where the things you buy are made, you don't know how the foods you eat or grown are produced, you can't tell how other people are feeling and you can't connect with other humans anymore. But you know about that dramatic tweet that some billionaire said yesterday, and how Ariana Grande looked physically ill when performing at the Grammys or whatever. I'm extremely out of touch with pop culture, so those are the only two things I can think of, but I'm sure you get the gist. Social media and overconsumption on the internet is ruining your life and slowly degrading our collective humanity, and that's a fact. It's so easy to compare yourself to other people that you see online and to think that you're behind. There's always someone with a better body than you, with more money than you, with a better business than you, with more friends and a more interesting overall better life than you. There's always bad news, some sort of crisis, death and despair and war and famine. Your brain can't tell the difference between what's going on in other parts of the world and what's going on right outside your window. Three months ago, all of this hit me and I decided to disconnect entirely from social media and most of what the average person consumes on the internet. I hadn't used Snapchat in years, but I deleted my account entirely just to say that I did. I only download Instagram maybe once every few weeks when someone inevitably sends me something that I didn't respond to and then ask me if I saw it or not. I scroll for maybe 10 minutes and then I re-delete it. The funny thing is that I don't re-delete it because I'm so set on not having social media. It's just that after three months of not buying into that ecosystem, I'm not interested in it at all anymore. Everything seems so boring and repetitive to consume and I don't get any joy whatsoever from scrolling on Instagram anymore. My walks with my dog are relaxing and calming and I have nothing to do on my phone so there's no reason for me to look at it during my walks. Now I can see things happening around me and I can tell more about the weather and more accurately predict if it's going to rain or not based on what I see. I could see the different cars in my apartment building lot and realize that certain people are coming and going from this place like it's an ant colony. I notice all the new buildings being built in my city when I'm on drives or how local businesses are closing or new ones are opening and how the physical world around me changes constantly. These things sound random and unimportant but it really just shows what the real world is in your physical space. After three months of not being distracted by the endless stream of information that was destroying my attention span, I now realize that the things happening around me are far more interesting than whatever stupid brain rot drama is going down on Twitter or whatever dumb stuff our president said. I'm more invested in my city as a whole, seeing it grow and improve and change with the times. I feel like it's way easier to connect with other people and listen to them when they talk to me. I'm living more presently in the moment because I genuinely don't have an interest anymore and thinking about things that are happening outside of what's right in front of me. Yeah, I'm not a complete hermit and I still keep up with some things like major world news headlines and the occasional mainstream culture moments that get to me through my YouTube consumption. But overall, I just feel like the quantity of information going into my brain is so much lower than it was before I stopped social media. All the things that gave me dread or despair or made me worry about the future are gone now and I can focus on doing what brings me joy. Doing good workouts and making good YouTube videos, hopefully. This video may be trash and you may think I'm a loser, but honestly, I don't care because the process of making it was so much more enjoyable when I could sit down and write and talk without my mind being so full of garbage. I mean, speaking of the gym, bro, I work out at a group fitness gym where everything is hosted in the form of these sort of like classes. There will be a weightlifting focus class, one that combines weightlifting and running, sometimes I'll do Pilates, sometimes I'll do yoga. There's a huge variety of different workout types and they're all coached. There's a guy or a girl who walks you through what you're supposed to do and you could hate on it if it's not your thing, but it genuinely makes my workouts feel so much better. It is so atrocious to me now that I'm disconnected from the internet to see how half of the people who attend these classes engage with them. There are girls who pick up their phone to scroll an Instagram between every set while the workout instructor is explaining what to do next. The other day, there was a girl on Pilates who was just scrolling through her emails, pausing in the middle of the workout to do it. Like bro, what are you waiting on? There's no way it's that important. It really irks me even more when I see it in yoga because yoga is supposed to be focused on mindfulness. Almost every single workout I go to, there's some wannabe influencer who's filming their bad form yoga workouts while doing it wrong to post it on Instagram. They're so busy living for the non-existent future of the internet that they can't even be mindful enough to enjoy a physical movement practice the way that it's supposed to be enjoyed. I'm being a snob, but what's the point of doing anything if you're going to do it halfway while being so to attracted by nonexistent things on the internet. What's the point of going out and socializing with friends if you're just gonna sit there and check your text every five minutes or go to a coffee shop and sit on the couch while you watch YouTube videos? It's pointless, and we're all engaging so shallowly with the world around us that everything feels hollow now. I don't really know how to describe it in a good way, but to me, in my personal city, it just feels like it lost its soul. I think it's because many of the individual people in this city don't contribute to its cultural development anymore because they'd rather spend their time on their screens. The local cafes and the local bars just feel like places to consume coffee or beer while people spend their real energy and money on companies and apps and ecosystems on their phones that don't exist within that same physical space. The web of relationships that made my city feel alive have been cut through with scissors and taped back together on the internet and everything feels fragmented and disconnected now, especially that I'm not part of those internet versions that replace the real ones. So I'm in a weird spot. I feel like deleting social media has somehow fixed a lot of problems or at least refrained them to make me realize that they weren't real problems in the first place. I don't need to keep up with people online, and you don't either. There's no point in these exchanges don't bring you real value. If anything, they make you feel more isolated. But at the same time, I feel like I don't quite fit into the real world the way that I used to. But up to date with the TikTok trends and the things that people talk about that they discover through the internet or the memes or any of that stuff, which makes me feel like I can't connect with as many people as I could before. But the people who actually matter to me, the small group of friends that I still have, my family, my girlfriend, I'm able to connect with them on a much deeper level now. So while this video is a bit different and not as focused on actionable advice and is more of like a video journal type of rant thing, I thought it was worth sharing because genuinely, deleting social media will likely make your life better. It'll make your life fuller and it'll force you to feel uncomfortable for a bit to find out what truly matters to you. Getting home from work and scrolling doesn't bring you any real value. While it fills the silence in your head that makes you overthink things, it doesn't actually solve any of your problems. That lack of meaning in life is still there, but you can't do anything about it because the internet and social media make you numb to it. Most people aren't even aware that it's there in the first place. But though, after getting through that uncomfortable feeling of directionlessness and dislike decline and your ability to fit in with mainstream internet culture, you'll begin to see what actually brings you true and deep meaning and fulfillment in life. You'll be able to see which friends you actually like hanging out with and which friendships you just maintained because it was easy and you guys had similar things to talk about. You'll see the people who care for who you are and not for the persona that you put out to the world on the internet. You'll feel less anxious about everything that's happening and have a more free mental and physical energy to use on making the world directly around you a better place. I understand, if I spent my free time scrolling on TikTok instead of making these videos, you would not be watching this video. If it's helpful to you in any way, shape or form, you can thank me not being on social media for that value. And I hope it is. So give it a try. You don't have to delete all of your accounts, just delete your apps and force yourself to not spend much time if any on social media for a month or two. Engage with the parts of the internet that actually still bring you value. Keep watching YouTube if you get joy from it and play games with other people on the internet. You don't have to become a full hermit who's not online at all, but channel your energy into the things that create positive interactions and positive value in your life. So are you going to give it a try? Have you tried it in the past? Has it worked for you? Do you see any notable difference? What's been the biggest obstacle for you? Let me know in the comments and maybe drop a reply to other people's comments as well. Humans down there can make a huge difference. And if you want to connect with other people who are taking steps to create meaning in their own lives, consider joining my discord using a link in the description. We have over 11,000 members who talk about self-improvement topics like this, and we even have a members-only Minecraft server exclusively for people who are in the discord to hop on and play games with other like-minded people who build you up instead of bringing you down. The server is a lot of fun, and this community is genuinely beautiful. If you want to be a part of it, you can find a link below. That's it for today's conversation, and we will talk again soon.