Why I quit social media (& the fitness industry)

How social media is NOT your friend when it comes to health

I played the social media game for a long time...

I hate social media

It was one of the reasons that I changed my business model from coaching to writing.

Here are just a few examples of why it is a train wreck...

1️⃣ It has to grab attention - It’s a picture or a few words in a caption - anything longer and people gloss over it or get bored of consuming it. If it doesn't grab your attention in the first 3 seconds, it's a goner...

2️⃣ There is no nuance - Attention grabbing means that nuance is lost. This encourages creators to dumb it down even more. Combine this with the fact that people LIKE to be offended and you have a toxic shitstorm where everything becomes a wild argument rather than real discourse.

3️⃣ Polarised views prevail - Engagement = promotion - outrageous and negative views get engagement so this gets promoted artificially pushing the content towards crazier and crazier topics and points of view.

4️⃣ It's mostly junk. To produce content at the rate needed to succeed, most of it has to be junk. There are a handful of thought leaders and the rest of the content is just reposts or variations of this. I mean, this is literally what is taught - "Just put interesting content in your own words."

Content is intended to feed an algorithm rather than serve you. Creators are therefore forced to perform to make money - helping you is secondary.​

You are the product.

Combine the hyperpalatable, empty calorie content with the dopamine engine that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside whilst equally hating yourself and you have the junk food of information served to you daily on your phone.

We know this and yet we still lap it up.

And worse still we make up excuses as to why - it's 'to stay in touch with friends' or 'because I learn a lot from it' or 'to make money online'.

These MIGHT be true. But more often than not it's simply an addiction combined with doing what everyone else is doing.

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport suggests that if you want to achieve something then figure out the best way of doing it rather than being addicted to social media and retrospectively justifying its use. Highly recommended read.