Jay Cruz, a Broadcasting Brain reader and a great blogger in his own right (see Tape Noise Diary), has written a thoughtful and insightful post about why he is drastically scaling back his social media participation in Why I’m Quitting Social Media.
Here’s an excerpt from his post:
Lets not fool ourselves. The web is mostly for entertainment. (Or, The Internet is for Porn) Everyone supposedly knows this, but pinpointing the distraction is actually harder than people are aware of.
When you read a book, watch tv, or consume other type of media, you do it for a purpose. Most of the time the purpose is to entertain yourself. But on the web, specially on so called social media like Twitter, the purpose is constantly being challenged and shifted. It’s a two way, or asynchronous conversation as it has been proselytized, but you still have to manage that expectation. To listen or to talk, to participate or to follow, to write or to read. This is theoretically great, but you will never have that sense of completion I was talking about. [Jay spent a week without Web access and says he focused a lot on activities which led to conclusive or decisive ends - more purposeful activities?] It’s an open loop that never closes in your head.
That’s one of the biggest reasons why I’m quitting social media services like Twitter and Tumblr. I just can’t do it anymore. I realized that at best social media is entertainment disguised as “useful” information or crowdsourced “knowledge”, and at worst is distraction disguised as entertainment. The later being most of my experience with social networking sites, specially Twitter. See, when you watch Television to kill time and distract yourself because you’re bored, it is easier to realize it. Most TV junkies are aware that they are TV junkies. But the web is constantly shifting your attention and it makes it harder to realize that you’re distracting yourself.
I started to write a lengthy comment to respond to his post, but I thought I’d turn it into a post here.
# # #
Jay:
Oddly enough, I posted a link to this post on Twitter. 
Seriously, though, I can appreciate a lot of what you are saying. If you’re like me and your day job (e.g. the means by which you exist and support your loves ones) has little to do with social media, communications, marketing, etc. then you’re constantly having to prioritize what you spend your time on. There are clearly people who choose to devote a lot of time and energy to monitoring, communicating, and evaluating, in addition to building many weak contacts and few, if any, strong ones. Sometimes that aligns with their jobs, other people just make the time within their own daily schedules for various reasons.
I cannot (and, truthfully, do not want to) spend gobs of time monitoring the social media services, keeping up the weak ties with a wide variety of interesting and smart people that I’ll probably never ever meet in person. My motivations and focus have changed during the past few months to what I’ll call a more pragmatic approach to social media. I do find it interesting to develop new weak contacts, “friends”, whatever you want to call them, but at the same time I’m reminded that my mother and other people of her generation used to collect charms and put them on charm bracelets. Similarly, there’s the Scouting movement and merit badges. If this seems impersonal, heartless, or at least cynical, well… take another look at audience building behavior, because some people are collecting things (people instead of badges) in search of some greater reward (attention, reputation, business deals, sales, and so on.)
Is every social media user doing this? Not at all. Most probably aren’t: I think they genuinely want to connect with people they know and possibly get introduced to kindred souls who they don’t yet know. But, if Twitter is any indicator of social media as a whole, I see a lot more internet marketers (I’m really not trying to make this sound evil – I really enjoyed some online interactions that I’ve had with people who could be called internet marketers, but I’ve never met any in person nor spoken to them on the phone) who are consciously working the social media tools with the very blatant purpose of building lists of potential sales contacts. The other force that’s been starting to overwhelm the Twittersphere is the celebrity Twitter user and their entourages/fan bases. Meanwhile, sometimes it feels like we common folk have to scream louder and louder for even our stronger contacts to hear us in the ever widening sea of noise and traffic. This punctures the balloon that we think of as online camaraderie.
You bring up another excellent point, too, about the endless, unresolved nature of Web surfing and following social media in particular: it’s like watching a highly trafficked, occasionally useful, but perpetual stream of data that becomes its own end instead of a series of hunt and gather missions with purpose. This doesn’t bother me so much, but it can be quite an unproductive time sink.
I don’t begrudge your decision to dial down social media, but I’ll be upset if you stop blogging, Jay. Very much enjoyed your post.
* * *
A few additional thoughts:
I may get a bit cynical at times about the various aspects of networking, promotion, link blasting, etc. that you experience on sites like Twitter, but I’m not planning to jump ship. My use of these tools has tapered off over time but I don’t foresee myself leaving any of my main haunts any time soon.
However, I appreciated Jay’s post because it brings a useful perspective to this whole process of maintaining multiple (or consistent) identities across multiple platforms and at least maintaining a facade of camaraderie (which is hopefully genuine most of the time). If there’s any danger in these services, it’s that they provide enough diverse content and “shiny new things” that their influence can expand exponentially to absorb your free time (aka your cognitive surplus). Great if you feel you can do that.
The other thing to consider is that I find the social media experience a lot like my university experience: I met a lot of great, fun people who I socialized with during the time, but over 99% of them have fallen by the wayside. The same would probably be true if I left Twitter or any other social media service. The advantage of university, though, is that at least I actually met a lot of people in person and spent at least some time with them. That’s not likely to happen for me in the social media sphere unless I suddenly start traveling a lot more than I have been during the past two years. But so it goes.
I really do believe in the value of social media, because I know the benefit it's had on my life and work. I've made good friends, learned new things, had fun. But there's no question that the internet can be a real time drain; and even more dangerous, a motivational drain–lulling my active thoughts into comfy browsing, even when that browsing is worthwhile interaction or beneficial research.
But it's funny, because I've found there are also “real-world” activities whose “influence can expand exponentially to absorb your free time.” Again, good and interesting of themselves, but maybe not what I need to be doing.
I'm learning that the key is to determine my priorities; and then focus all my time, attention, and energy on them exclusively.
Then go veg out on Twitter as my reward.
HTW … huge time waste … about the same as television, just called “social media” …
Heh, the last is pretty humorous. Good one, Christine!
And, yes, there are certainly plenty of off-line time sinks as well.
I think it's also worth noting Jay's point about the lack of fulfillment, too.
Could be.
Thanks for sharing the post around and for offering a really great reaction. I was kind of scared that it was going to turn out too lecture-y.
I don't think is something that drastic though. That's another assumption about social media that's overblown. The idea that if you're not on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, you're missing out. I guess the speed, but I find that to be more of a disadvantage. I'm slowing it down like Dr Dre with Dr Pepper.
I'm definitely not planning on quitting the blog however. This can sound hypocritical because blogs are thrown into the social media tag, but the expectation and purpose is clear. I write, you read. Maybe I get comment, maybe I comment back.
But I'm definitely out of the following-being-followed thing. And hey, I can always make a blog post of what I had for breakfast.
Thanks again Mark. I always appreciate your thoughts.
You know what? I KNOW I'm a social media addict. I WAY prefer it to being a TV addict. TV decides what I learn, what I watch. (I have a choice of shows, but..once in a show, I'm locked into that show) I like the social interaction. If I'm going to be sitting around, I want to be sitting around interacting with people in real time. I find VERY FEW people here in the deep south that i can connect with. It it weren't for social media, I'd be sitting on the porch with my brother shooting at squirrels. Or I'd be watching cable tv. Or I'd be … well, I guess I'd be doing what I did before I found the internet, drinking myself to death.
No worries, thanks for stopping by. Glad to hear the blogging continues!
And that's another useful perspective, Zed.
Seriously, I can understand your concern about not having kindred souls to connect with.
[...] Mark points out in his post not everyone is happy with the shallowness that people try to sell as the new friendship. I cannot [...]
[...] Broadcasting Brain picks up a rather interesting post from Jay Cruz that challenges me to consider Twitter and social media in a light that I haven’t quite done before called Why I’m Quitting Social Media: I realized that at best social media is entertainment disguised as “useful” information or crowdsourced “knowledge”, and at worst is distraction disguised as entertainment. The later being most of my experience with social networking sites, specially Twitter. See, when you watch Television to kill time and distract yourself because you’re bored, it is easier to realize it. Most TV junkies are aware that they are TV junkies. But the web is constantly shifting your attention and it makes it harder to realize that you’re distracting yourself. [...]
I'd say the biggest factor is WHY you use it.
To me, it's a wonderful way to eavesdrop into conversations between people I look up to. I get a better sense of who they are, and where all their interests lie.
Michael, that's certainly true to the extent of what people reveal about themselves online. You certainly get a better sense of what a person is like with these tools than without, but it's still a limited glimpse.
Great topic!
I'm the kind of person that's very curious about a lot of things, especially things going on in social media. But I can also get overwhelmed really quickly, too. Which sadly takes away from my “cognitive surplus” and “creative energy.” And when those are depleted, I've discovered that it takes away from what I can actually bring to the conversations going on in Facebook and Twitter.
I often wonder why someone has followed me for months on twitter but not said anything via @replies or DM. I don't @reply to every follower but when I saw few followers engaging with me, even though I showed a genuine interest in their ideas, I started to have my doubts about the benefits of Twitter as a relationship building tool.
So I started to focus more on having real expectations and focus more on building a manageable community. But building relationships is hard to do in person, let alone via the internet or social media communities. And it's also hard not to get caught up in the social media popularity contest, and think that if you don't have a bazillion followers than you're not doing something right. Which is one of the emotional traps of Twitter.
My goal lately has been to really focus on what I'm passionate about and try to figure out how that can help other people. And hopefully what I bring to the community will change the world for the better in some way. That's something I can manage, which helps me see the benefits of social media more than its flaws.
I'm confident that blogs are still going to be around because they can present a more complete picture of person and their built better for conversation over a period of time, which is key to building meaningful relationships. And I do hope that you keep blogging Jay.
As you can tell, this post really struck a chord. Thanks for sharing Mark!