Why i’m leaving social media (sort of)

i love it here: introducing airplane mode

Some people dream about quitting their job to leave everything behind for a mysterious new life in a small town where no one knows their name— I dream about deleting my instagram account.

I understand that without social media I wouldn’t have a career in journalism, grasp cryptocurrency, or be in a position to pontificate about Jake Gyllenhal’s attachment style, but the internet is rotting my brain. And that’s nothing compared to what it’s doing on a global scale, like spreading the idea that the election was stolen, that the earth is flat and that the Covid-19 vaccines are a biological weapon for population control. It’s not surprising that the data is unanimous: the more time we spend on social media, the less happy and healthy we are. 

And yet as rates of anxiety and depression have more than doubled in recent times, you wouldn’t be able to tell from social feeds that have more in common with a pharmaceutical ad for lexapro than the life of a real person. I wonder how historians of the future will make sense of this moment in time. How would they even document our sadness if all they find is our happy pictures? Many of the iconic images from the 1950s featured gleeful white housewives who secretly felt like prisoners, but at least it was the external work of self-serving corporations who wanted to sell them products. Now, the depressed inmate pretending to be free is the one producing and distributing her own image. In the span of a generation, we’ve gone from panopticism to voluntary servitude—a kind of clinical obedience blood-thirsty capitalists could only dream of.

As I watch celebrities slowly transform into avatars of themselves by way of filters and fillers (or in a growing number of cases both) it’s hard not to feel like we are in one big simulation where the goal isn’t to feel happy— it’s to feel nothing. When Emily Ratajkowski, the designated “it girl” who embodies and possesses the uniquely unachievable beauty standard everyone is striving for, writes a whole book about feeling miserable about it, it’s worth asking why we keep participating in a game where even the winners complain about losing.

I mean at least Aphrodite enjoyed being a goddess. 

We’re a generation I'm told, that documents everything, and yet when I scroll all I see is what’s missing. I see illustrious engagements but few breakups. I see a lot of job promotions but not the hundreds of “I hope this finds you well” emails that led to it. We’re a generation who is explicitly aware of every single person’s miraculous breakthroughs but none of the messy breakdowns, encouraged to share every human experience except for the ones that make us human.

Conversely, the news ecosystem operates in the exact opposite way. If it bleeds, it leads. We hear about every government failure, but so much about its successes. We know every detail about the conflict, but very little about the cooperation. We know about the judges who throw people in jail but not the ones who help them avoid it. We’re extremely literate in the erosion of women’s rights, but rarely see headlines about how they’ve expanded worldwide. Facebook chooses to show us news we hate more than news we like. The business model for news is broken and my newsletter is a humble attempt to try and solve it.

I hope that if you follow me on social media, you understand that I’m committed to trying to do good online. But at the same time, I’m worried about doing it somewhere that’s so inherently bad. I hate that the place where I get to hang out with you is also where you end up feeling worse about yourself or the world. 

That’s why I created Airplane Mode. Since there’s no data showing that doom scrolling increases well-being I thought I would focus on something that does correlate with long-term happiness: social connectedness. Instead of collecting in spaces that prime us to feel less fulfilled, I thought I would create a community for us that feels held, safe and included. I needed a space that isn’t social media to connect with you, and I thought you might like that too. 

Airplane Mode is a place for news, culture and current affairs—minus the depression. You can expect to find essays my editor wouldn’t publish, mental health hacks, feminist revolution planning, succession inside jokes and some intermittent fasting slander, but mostly you can expect to feel a bit happier after you read it. It’s only 5 bucks per month, or 50 bucks for a whole year and it would mean a lot to me if you subscribed. It’s the best way to directly support my work and make sure I don’t have to take a soul-sucking job corporate job, lose my lousy health care or be forced to sue greenpeace.

So put your phone and brain on airplane mode, twice a week while I do my best to make you smile, think, and maybe cry (just a little). Consider Airplane Mode, your mental health pit stop, a spiritual speed bump, what used to happen when we went to the bathroom and our responsibilities, boss or bumble matches didn’t follow us in there. 

Welcome to Airplane Mode. I’m glad you’re here.