The morning alarm goes off. You wake up, reach for your phone to turn it off, and your thumb automatically finds Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, and the never-ending scroll begins.
Oh, look, there’s a political post from a second cousin once removed. A recipe you must try. Websites that should be illegal. Trump has dementia, or cankles, or a stroke. A co-worker’s kid is going to college.
You comment on the Facebook post, and then a bunch of other people, some you know, start commenting on your comment, and now you’ve spent a couple of hours sharing and rage quoting, and scrolling, and you haven’t really gotten out of bed yet.
If this sounds like you, that’s a real problem. This addiction may not start the first thing in the morning. It could be a needed hit while in line at Starbucks, as you mindlessly eat lunch, or right before bed.
Constantly being on social media, adding pictures and videos, or sharing events is so ubiquitous today that no one thinks twice.
But maybe you should.
With every post, comment, share, or like, we are telling stories. Social media was sold to the masses as a way to stay in touch with old and new friends. We can easily share our feelings and hot takes on anything and everything with just a few taps on our phones.
But should we?
When I was growing up, without social media and mobile phones, it was not easy to communicate. I wrote letters and mailed them to friends who lived outside my hometown. I sometimes made phone calls, but there were long-distance charges I didn’t want to pay for. If we had a secret, we would share it face-to-face.
There was an expectation of not being able to reach someone. I could have been across town on my bike, and my parents had no idea where I was or who I was with. I could have been cruising with my friends on a country road with a 10 pm curfew on a Friday night and nothing else to stop me.
My parents didn’t “helicopter” me. They simply trusted me not to do anything stupid (or at least not too stupid). The thought of “sharing” what we were doing with everyone never even crossed our minds.
Today, the opposite is true. It’s weird not to share our experiences, no matter how mundane, with the world. It’s weird to keep things private.
It shouldn’t be.
I was undoubtedly guilty of oversharing on Facebook and Twitter. It was fun, especially in the early days, to learn what high school and college friends were up to. It was fun to reconnect. And then it was fun to tell the world how great things were going, how terrible things were, or here’s what I ate for lunch.
Social media became the default. Profoundly dark or bubbly upbeat got the same level of engagement. We shared, and then we overshared, and sometimes we paid the price. Relationships went sideways because you liked a picture of an ex-boyfriend. Jobs were lost because of an ill-informed tweet or post.
You read stories of off-the-cuff remarks ultimately getting people into hot water. And still we wanted more to see, to read, to be “outraged” over, to get “angry” at. It was and is addictive.
Social media made individuals the stars of their own show. Constant selfies. Constant updates on relationships, food choices, experiences like concerts and sporting events. They organized their lives to be content. The feedback, good or bad, was needed, longed for, and expected. The dopamine hits had to keep coming. Their individual value is judged by their social media following, their hot takes on the latest news, and how they look, talk, and present themselves.
In my opinion, this relentless hamster wheel is detrimental, unhealthy, and a waste of time.
So, what’s the solution? Surprisingly, it’s keeping a journal or diary.
Keeping a journal is nothing new. It also doesn’t matter if it’s pen and paper or digital. Keeping a private diary is almost quaint in this day and age of oversharing. It’s also a quiet way of saying, “to hell with the algorithm.”
What to do is simple. Treat your journal as a private social media feed and you’re the only follower. Only you can see your posts. You write all the things you’d usually write on a social media feed into your journal. Thoughts and feelings. Worries and successes. Any experience you want to hold on to or reflect upon. It’s all the benefits of sharing or “getting it out of your system,” without worrying about how it’s perceived. There is no performance, just writing.
I built mine in Day One. Most entries are a few paragraphs. I usually have a theme, and I add a photo. I added a section to mark the weather, what I’m listening to at the time with a link, what I’m reading, a quote, and more. I treat each entry like private tweets or microblog posts, the kind I’d never actually post. It’s 280+ characters of whatever the hell I’m thinking.
And something magical happens. All the thoughts and feelings that have been bubbling up go right in Day One. I can be pissed about my co-workers and not think twice about posting. I can write in the first person or third person, and no one will know. Or care.
It’s freedom.
There is no public perception of anything because there’s no public. I get to reflect on a biting comment my wife said to me, write it all out in a way I can review, and decide whether or not she was full of shit (she never is). I can grow and try to learn from my mistakes, and no one else gets to chime in.
There’s no instant gratification of a social media post with hundreds of likes or a long comment thread. And that makes all the difference. Treating Day One like a private social media feed can seem lonely at first. However, that audience of one is also its strength.
By all means, keep your social media and post whatever makes you feel happy. I’ve decided I don’t need the aggravation. I’ve decided to write in Day One instead of Bluesky, Threads, Twitter, or whatever the hell is the flavor of the month now.
I’ve found that I no longer need the validation of strangers or near strangers. I hope you all like what I write here, but you don’t get to see all of me. My journal gets it. It’s immensely satisfying to write in Day One and then refine my thoughts through the writing process.
Reading it back, it’s the diary of a madman, and I like it.
Be seeing you.
