Beyond the infinite scroll is more loneliness

Disconnection is the paradox of social media. I miss hanging out with friends.

I shut the world out for a bit this summer. Closed my eyes and took a breath. It wasn’t intentional, this social media break, nor was it any kind of deliberate experiment. It’s just that I logged on and found I had nothing to say.

Sixteen years of yapping in 300 characters since I first got on Twitter and suddenly I lose my voice. What more can I add to the discourse on politics, on war, or the inhumanity weaving itself into our history that’s not already signal boosted into an echo-chamber of rage posts? Why would anyone care what I had for dinner or the new tchotchke I added to my bookshelf? Remember when we used to post all day, every day about the most mundane stuff? It was fun back then before sharing turned into content creation.

I used to love random conversations with internet strangers; some even evolved into real friendships. But lately, even being a quiet voyeur into other people’s thought space feels weird. Consuming, but not posting. Still endlessly scrolling. What once made me feel connected to other humans now feels like a commodified blur of noise and over-stimulation. If I could compare it to a physical place, social media is Times Square: loud, overexposed, and brazenly lit in full daylight.

I wish I could tell you that what I gained back in time away from my feeds was real and productive, but it wouldn’t be true. I didn’t read more books, jump into big creative projects, or spend more time outside. Time just…evaporated.

This was truly a summer of doing nothing if you count productivity as the only metric of measurable gain, but you and I both know that chasing productivity just to say you’re busy is bullshit. A break for mental clarity, physical health, or even just a pause from this country’s dysfunction and corruption is sometimes necessary. Some would point out that there's privilege in being able to bury your head in the sand even for a bit— that saying nothing at all is, in itself, a statement. There’s truth in that too and I feel the tiniest twinge of guilt.

But this isn’t another essay about reclaiming time or attention spans or even breaking scrolling addictions (I still have a scrolling addiction). The most surprising thing is that the loneliness still remains. Maybe the joke’s on me, or maybe it was never the problem in the first place. Disconnection is the paradox of social media. The infinite scroll is a lonely place. But I have since come to realize that quitting social media cold can be a bit of a double-edged sword.

The like button is the bare minimum acknowledgement that is just enough of a reminder that your friends and family are out there, but not really in your life in a way that matters. A heart-shaped tap is not the same as keeping in touch. Nothing replaces the experience of sitting opposite another human and reading the subtle shifts in their expression during a conversation. It’s why I left Instagram and Linkedin more than a year ago.

I also could not face my own perceived mediocrity and loss of career ambition on platforms that are now optimized for brand engagement and influencing. My fragile ego! During a post-career meltdown, I wasn’t strong enough to watch others soar while I muddled in a sea of ambiguity and stagnation. Petty? Sure. But real.

I had thought that avoiding these apps would replace those hollow likes with something more genuine—and in some cases it had. But in reality, my circle of friends just became a lot smaller. The apps put into focus what friendship is and isn’t. Those in the periphery drifted away into the vapors.

And so I missed birthdays, deaths, graduations, and births. News of job changes and moves to new cities or even across the entire country. I missed all of the updates that were shared online and then started to wonder if I was the bad friend for missing it all. I had unintentionally closed myself off from people who were in my life only through social media; it was only then that I began to understand that this is the collateral damage of freeing yourself from the feed.

So is it worth it? Exchanging my time and sanity for a tighter circle of people beyond the internet? I don’t really know. Sometimes my phone is a little too quiet.

Studies shows that social media has redefined what it means to socialize, particularly for younger generations who regard online interaction as equivalent to in-person connections. I know this is true, but I also watch my kid spend time with her high school friends this summer waking before the crack of dawn to watch the sunrise, creating and sharing slideshow recaps of their first year in college, and spending an entire day walking Manhattan from tip to tip.

I miss those grand, ambitious plans. I miss spontaneous gatherings in the park that spill over into a friend’s house. Marathon hang sessions where you eat, watch movies, and share your most vulnerable thoughts deep into the night. It’s a facet of youth that feels impossible to recapture with adult friendships.

I watch the kid review photos and videos that she takes with her camera: selfies and group shots and goofy videos of lip synched dances edited with fast cuts like you’d see on a reel. She shows me the shots she’s proud of and laughs at an unexpected moment that only a camera’s quick shutter could capture. I ask her where she’s going to post them.

“Nowhere.” she tells me. “They’re for my own memories.”

And this kind of blows my mind. I’ve spent the better part of eighteen years sharing photos online and my brain can’t comprehend. I still take photos obsessively, so where do I feel comfortable posting them now? Not on any Meta product. The only place left on the internet that I’m sharing for now is here.

Reframing picture-taking as keepsake rather than content is a slow mind shift. Remembering the distinction between loneliness and solitude gives me some clarity. I struggle to remember what I did in the mornings before we became tethered to our devices. I start leaving behind my phone and sit by the window with my tea and tend to my plants. A new morning habit.

But I’ve also dipped a toe back into Threads and Bluesky again, enough to plug back into the pop culture vernacular and feel a little more connected. I’m still not posting like I used to, but my god maybe we should all post a little less. Platforms evolve (or rather, enshittify) and we should evolve along with it.

If tech CEOs had their way, we’d all be wearing smart glasses to keep us chronically online. Our desire for convenience and speed might make this future a reality. But the far saner thing to preserve our presence in the offline world would be to fight against the drain of our cognitive attention and the commodification of social exchange. Social media and whatever AI drivel the tech bros will dream of will never be a proxy for friendships. I think I’d rather learn to revel in my solitude instead.

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Related reading

The friendship recession

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Linkage & recs

To read:

• America’s New No. 1 Song Is by a Group That Doesn’t Exist (Slate)
  Either you’re sick of hearing about K-pop Demon Hunters or you have no idea what that even is, but this animated musical is looking like it’ll soon become the most watched movie of all time on Netflix.
  I’m still scratching my head over what’s made it so popular—and I mean that as no shade to the movie itself (I’ve watched it twice). Maybe the world is ready for a post-multicultural musical about a K-pop girl band who fights demons. If BTS did indeed pave the way in breaking down barriers towards mainstream global success, K-pop Demon Hunters is introducing a whole new audience to K-pop.

• 'Humans need solitude': How being alone can make you happier (BBC)
  Ok. Tell me how, please.

• The Pleasure of Patterns in Art The interplay between repetition and variation is central to how we perceive structure, rhythm, and depth across mediums. (MIT Press Reader)

• The over-the-top world of luxury dorm decorating (WaPo, may be paywalled)
  No no noooo why is this even a thing when college is so expensive? This gives Emily Gilmore decorating Rory’s room at Yale.

• Friendship is My Writing Process (Electric Lit)
  This reminds me of my collage summer.

• To Raise Children, We Must First Raise Parents An anthropologist compares her early motherhood in London with child care experiences in a hunter-gatherer community of Central Africa. (Sapiens)

• And then there’s this intriguing headline (Guardian)

  

To make and eat:

• Grilled Peach & Apricot Salad (Food52)
  It’s summertime and that means we’re eating all the peaches while we can. I recently had the pleasure of picking peaches from my cousin’s friend’s front lawn in a Boston suburb, and if that wasn’t enough, we just got another box of peaches from Costco. I’ve even been tossing them into my salads, so I knew I would dig this recipe.

To watch:

• You know I love cats, but I can’t comprehend how literally INSANE this whole thing is. I mean, the craftsmanship and technical skills to pull this off. He’s also built a mini-home and supermarket for pets too. All the electrics and smart devices work.