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Seven and a half hours of scrolling social media

Perhaps related to my recent post on overcoming overwhelm, I realised how much social media has been eating at my attention and time.

I don’t blame social media, I blame myself. And if I blame myself then I know I can take action to address it.

After taking a little time for myself at the weekend I reflected on where my time had been spent over the recent weeks. I looked at Screen Time on my iPhone to assess whether my suspicions were correct.

Yes, I was spending a lot more time than I wanted to on social media.

Mark Zuckerberg and his team have been excelling at pulling me into their world and keeping me there. I counted at least seven and a half hours of time on Instagram and Threads across the week. Even though I have a Screen Time limit of 30 minutes per day on all “social” apps on my phone.

Seven and a half hours… that’s on top of TV and other distractions. That’s time I could be truly resting, or giving my best to a creative pursuit, or exercising.

It’s junk food time.

As anyone who has tried Apple’s Screen Time features knows, “Ignore for fifteen minutes” is an easy button to press when you’re deep down the rabbit hole of your Instagram feed at 10pm.

I struggle with social media on my phone, not because I feel addicted but because I feel there is an aspect that is core to my job — to stay up to date, to post, to keep on the pulse of the industry.

But I realised, I don’t need these apps on the device I carry everywhere.

I deleted Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and X from my phone. They're gone.

Let’s see how this serves me — perhaps the added friction that I must go to my iPad or my Mac to access any of these social feeds will not starve me of knowledge or make me a social pariah like I think it will.

Perhaps against the rhetoric of AI being a socially destructive technology, there are ways it could be employed to save us time, to shield us from modern day distractions, to be looking out for us, rather than to work against us.

If you’re struggling with distractions yourself, here are a few resources I have found helpful:

Thready or not, here I come

As you’ve probably seen, Meta launched their newest app today, Threads.

It’s like Twitter, only considerably slimmed down.

For day one, it seems it couldn’t have gone better for the makers of Instagram.

As someone who geeks out on tech products all the time, I find the Threads launch fascinating, so I jotted a few notes and observations down about it.

Timing is everything

It’s no coincidence that Threads is launching in the same week that sentiment towards Twitter is at an all-time low.

Elon Musk decided to enforce aggressive rate limiting for all users, made Tweeetdeck redundant for many, and obliterated the value of public URLs by preventing tweet embeds for non-logged-in users.

It’s clear Threads could be better.

It could have more features.

It’s not quite ready when you compare the feature checklist.

But launching this week while Twitter is in the dumps (more than usual) may just give it the strong gust of goodwill that helps this spark of a product turn into a full-blown, roaring fire of a platform.

Ship early, iterate

Many “critical” features aren’t in at launch, but is the app and experience solid? Is it easy for new users to onboard? Is the experience reaching a threshold that the majority of users will enjoy and trust? Yes.

You want the ability to filter your feed, you want better search, you want to have more clarity on who’s following you. You want an API. You want the app if you’re in the EU!

But all of those are trade-offs between shipping now or shipping later.

Someone had to make that call. The easy option is always to wait. Waiting always feels safer.

Shipping this week looks like it was the right call. The rest can come later.

Aside: If you’re interested, a while ago I wrote about the importance of shipping early, and often.

Nothing to lose

What I’ve enjoyed most so far as an observer of the Threads launch today has been seeing Meta operate like they have nothing to lose.

Launch today. Move fast. Share the numbers. Integrate with the open standards (eventually).

It seems unlike many of Meta’s most significant big launches: Instagram Stories was a bolt-on to not lose out to Snapchat, Reels is another tab to avoid losing out to TikTok, and Instagram itself was an acquisition.

Threads, though, is a joy to see: Zuck and the team building something that doesn’t just compete, but that could genuinely be better than Twitter. Making something people want. With a beautiful blank slate.

Maybe I am just relieved to not have another tab, view, or swipe in the Instagram app. Or perhaps it’s that my trust in Twitter has dwindled.

Whatever the reason, I’m rooting for Threads. If you’re on it, join me!