It’s been a while since I developed the idea that social media, instead of being a place to connect, are actually a burden of stimuli and information overloading our conciousness.
I’m not a monk, but my intention is to cultivate renunciation: one of the things I want to renunciate is social medial; but, that constant encouragment of being part of it because you “must do it for x and y reason” makes it difficult. It seems society is too dependent on those things, and they want to transfer that dependence to others, including people who actually enjoy being off that burden.
Anyway, enough talking. My question is: how can we keep cultivating renunciation ( in small steps, of course) regardless of that constant encouragement to be extremely indulgent (a characteristic of social media)?
If you can see how a particular platform is harming your mind then that would be a good reason to quit.
Review the kinds of thoughts you have throughout your day and consider where these are coming from. If they are thoughts of acquisition/desire, harming or ill will they going to feel unpleasant and are going to create future unwholesome states.
Maybe a lot of these are coming from TikTok (for example), so you can see the danger now in going on tiktok. Now, reflect why you dull your mind with tikTok? Is it actually to try and avoid those very same unpleasant states that it’s giving rise to? Does it make you feel lonely or inadequate, for example? That’s what these kind of platforms are designed to do. When you can see why you are using that platform then you might find another way to fill that need.
With these kinds of wisdom, you could set yourself an experiment to see what happens when you give up that platform for a month. Just get curious and set it up like a little experiment. You can go back to it after the month if you think that it truly has benefit. Just quit one platform for one month. Observe what your mind does when it wants to go on that platform? How does your body feel? What do you do instead?
Hola, Javier!
Social media is something many of us struggle with, so it can be helpful to approach it as a kind of personal experiment.
First, try curating your feed. Choose accounts and content that are wholesome and genuinely positive. A cleaner feed like this can be uplifting, and it’s usually less “sticky” than the random, highly stimulating material that tends to pull the mind toward unwholesome states.
Along with that, consider turning off most notifications and unfollowing or muting sources that feel agitating or addictive. By doing this gradually, you let go of some of social media’s most compulsive hooks. These platforms are explicitly designed to keep you watching, often quite aggressively.
Social media itself isn’t intrinsically bad; what really matters is how we use it and how willing we are to let the algorithm manipulate our attention and emotions.
Another practice you might try is to put your phone on silent, face down, in a different room from where you’ll be for a while. Then simply observe how often the urge to go and check it appears. That observation alone can be very revealing.
Thank you so much for sharing this insight with me; it really helped me to change my relationship with this platforms.
Right now I’m not using them, and that gave me peace and tranquility; something I highly appreciate. Nevertheless, I don’t discard completely the option of coming back for job reasons. If I do so, I’ll keep in mind what you’ve shared with me.
