Shayla Love here. Subbing for Sigal on parental leave. It’s a treat. I answer questions here to untangle the knots in human nature—psychology, philosophy, the messy stuff between. Send them in. Life quandaries are welcome.
So the letter lands. It’s heavy with that specific brand of modern dread. The writer loves being online less and feeling better when offline. No Twitter stress. No Bluesky anxiety. Just peace.
But then the guilt hits. Two problems. One: abandoning the digital soapbox feels irresponsible. If you have an audience, leaving them feels like dereliction. Two: the internet pays the bills. Or at least, it fuels the non-professional writing career. Sources dry up if you go dark.
It’s a tug of war. Stay and suffer, or leave and stagnate. The benefits of each are real. The costs of each are steep. What to do?
The question isn’t whether social media is good. It’s whether it’s useful to you.
Dear Wishfully-Off-the-Off,
I feel that tension. In late June, New York City started plastering posters everywhere for the “Summer of Ludd.” Offline events. A revival of the 19th-century spirit against machines. I went to one in Manhattan. The crowd wasn’t what you might expect.
Let’s fix the word Luddite first. Today it’s an insult. It means a stubborn person who refuses to use new tech. Who clings to broken toasters. That’s not what it was. The real Luddites were clothmakers in England. Rich merchants bought machines. Wages dropped. Conditions worsened. Workers tried to organize. It failed.
So they smashed the looms. Not all technology. Just the kind that de-skilled them and concentrated power upward. Journalist Brian Merchant calls it targeted violence against exploitation. The British government made it a capital crime. Breaking a machine meant death.
The neo-Luddites I met didn’t carry hammers. They carried flip phones.
At the “Luddite Conference on Participatory Futures,” an organizer asked the room if they could exist without social platforms. The auditorium was packed. Standing room only. Kids in their twenties, stylish outfits, swapping advice on how to delete accounts. The answer was a loud yes.
Their argument? Learning the world is better offline. Meeting people IRL is the actual politics. Algorithms curate your reality. In-person relationships don’t have ads. They have friction. Friction builds trust. Trust builds movement.
I tested this. Years ago, I got off the grid mentally. I joined a local mutual aid group. We run a community garden. We grow hundreds of pounds of food for free fridges. We teach food justice and climate history.
I barely post about it. But I know my neighbors. I know local politicians. I feel more agentic than I ever did typing at a keyboard. The garden doesn’t care about my engagement metrics.
Social media is also bad for your brain’s ability to change minds. Think you’re converting trolls with tweets? You aren’t. Researchers from Princeton and Stanford checked this. They exposed people to opposing views on Facebook. The result? Almost zero change in political behavior.
Worse. The likes you do get reinforce your bias. Max Fisher’s The Chaos Machine explains it. A like is a hit of dopamine. It signals “you are right.” You double down. Contradiction triggers defense, not debate. You become more extreme. The other person does too. Two sides digging in. No one moving.
Does that sound like progress?
I’m not saying quit everything. There are human reasons to stay. A paradox. Mobile connectivity makes us reach anyone, yet it makes us feel isolated. I love seeing pics of my distant friend’s baby. I liked posting wedding photos.
But I curate ruthlessly now. Only real friends. Only people I miss. Instagram is a gallery of loved ones now, not a battlefield. It brings joy instead of envy.
If your social media use makes you miserable, listen. That signal matters. People already depressed or lonely often sink deeper with every scroll.
Context counts too. Scrolling in nature? Bad for your soul. Scrolling while commuting or surrounded by people you love? Lonely. Scrolling alone for five minutes? Less harmful. Sharing big milestones? Good for happiness.
Maybe reclaim the digital for the intimate. And take the activism to the street. Or the park. Or the kitchen table.
Bill Hartung, a political scientist, put it best. When someone asked how to reduce social media use without guilt, he said it’s not about willpower. It’s about design.
“I think we just need to make real Life more attractive.”
The Luddite movement today is gentle. No smashed looms. No jail sentences. Just a suggestion that reality is more vivid if you actually touch it.
Be invested in the future by being present in it. Even just a little.
Bonus: What I’m reading
