Away from you.
But seriously.
I clicked “confirm” or maybe it was “yes, I do agree to burn my bridge” and closed out the browser for facebook. I had changed my account to “temporarily never here again” and the result was exhaustive relief and echoing sadness. The casual high-school-friend catching up, the dozens of groups I’d helped manage for the last decade, the thin connections to parts of my tapestried history, cut. Half-cut? Maybe forever cut.
I tapped an equally doomish “yes” for instagram to step away from my personal account. The pronouncement I was both leaving my job and pausing sharing on the internet for the time being happened to coincide at the end of 2022. A fitting closing to what was really, in many ways, a specific call for a specific period of my life. The hundreds of weekly DMs I answered and prayed with for both work and personal, cut. Half-cut? Work forever cut, personal maybe forever cut.
Threeish months into this black hole of no-social-media living, I can safely say, it’s still relief and sadness.
I wonder what that one woman did with her kitchen, another with her book project, a third with her cutie little kids. People I don’t have numbers to text, people I don’t even know well enough to text, people whose lives were parallel to mine in the e-universe whom I felt a sisterly solidarity with. Are those kinds of friendships real?
Years ago, an aunt reduced me to tears after an argument that no friendship online could be a real one. You have to see each other’s crinkled brow over coffee, she had proclaimed. Many of my best friends lived in my e-universe, all my work friends and collaborators, every other Catholic mom with a ton of kids under 3 years old, my life supports. I couldn’t sustain her insistence that I was a fraud of a friend.
+ +
So if we are to take simplicity, this threshing machete, to our phone and e-universe lives, what will happen? What will prove to be real and what will show up as fraudulent? If we step back from ideas on pinterest, arguments on twitter, washable rug ads on ig, reaction videos on youtube, and election predictions for 2024 on facebook? (Dear reader, whatever other socials may exist, I’m simply too old for them!)
Will we see a decompression in the speed in which our brains race? (Yes.)
Will we miss the experience of engaging with other people from the comfort of our crowded closet floor since we can’t really get out and away? (Yes.)
Will we have lots of brain space to hear God? (Yes.)
Will we have more emotional energy for the people in front of us? Since socials are like leaving the facet running slightly at all times? (Yes.)
Will we feel isolated and alone like the bad old days? (Yes.)
Will we have to figure out what to do with that, like have a standing facetime with old friends, intentional brunches with newer ones, a text thread with a girlfriend on pilgrimage? (Yes.)
I am not saying to throw your phone away. I am not saying you have to do the extreme move that I did or otherwise you won’t see fruits. I am saying that if you stay on the emotional fast tracks of social media, will it end in a wreckage of your relationships in real life (bc everything is easier and better and brighter online), a derailment of your prayer life (bc you consumed a bunch of spiritual content so that counts, right?), and reinforce every negative thing you think about yourself (you need to redecorate, lose weight, make catchy reels, and grow stunning eyelashes to be happy)? What’s your trajectory?
Mine was a cliff.
I struggled to be docile to this inner voice asking, telling, guiding me to take a serious internet break. My dopamine receptors in my brain were hooked on the ping!ping!ping! feedback I got from helping people, lifting people up, judging people. There is a pervading quiet now. I pick my phone up just to set it back down. There’s not really anything to check. I look around the bedroom instead, close my eyes, and rock the baby to sleep.
Simplicity for me is an urgency to examine what’s crowding me, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Maybe it’s one of these categories for you, or maybe it’s simply be at peace with the chaos around you and the idea of removing or trimming is too stressful. That’s more than fine. I put forth a principle for you, show how it applies to my life, and encourage you to think it through in your own. No judgment. Just a desire for you to have more with less.
Stripped of everything, of all the “following” and “title” and simply tapping away an essay once a week here for you, dear reader and, dare I say, friend?, I have more with less. I have more honesty about my many failings since I can’t escape them. I have more clarity about my relationship with God because I have room for Him in a whole new way. An entire room for Him in our house, actually, where I pray every morning. I have more concerted efforts for each child who has suddenly a panoply of issues, things that maybe were there and simply simmering.
Okay, examine your phone/socials/internet addiction. See what comes up. Who’s brave enough to comment and tell us?
Love and see you next week,
Nell
where to put your phone
You touch on something I’ve been thinking about lately. The distracting ourselves that this connection to the online world offers us that can keep us from doing the work, being really present to the life God has called us to. The scrolling can feel productive - but it’s a fake productivity. - like survivor video games are for teens - you feel like you’ve done something, but it’s not real. The listening to all the info - that drowns out the voices right in front of us, or that still small voice, or the hard issues you’re being called to struggle with and pray about. During Lent I have been trying to not wear my earpiece when my family is with me - and it’s been so eye opening. Because even when that earpiece is playing a religious podcast, or a life giving book or music - I was not fully present to those in my house. I was responding to their needs more like an interruption when they came in the midst of making dinner while at a good part of a book. Here’s to more connection by disconnecting. Thanks for your weekly musings!
I started by leaving the phone out of the room while I nursed the baby, an offering for a very special intention. And, wouldn’t you know it, that space assisted in making a beautiful 54 day rosary Novena happen to completion. I’m mostly signed off for Lent, save to check on a dear friend who was in critical condition as Lent began. Praise God she went home today! So, perfect timing on the essay to re-up and sign off completely.