What's next?

May, 19 2026

I don't hate a lot of things, but I can safely say I hate what social media has done to us. It ruined our attention span, it ruined our free time by hijacking our brains, it ruined travelling by creating hyper trends in tourism, it ruined our self-confidence by putting us in competition with each other, it ruined communication by favouring conflictual opinions over detailed and complex ideas, I could go on. Most of social media, if not all, is in the hands of a few tech billionaires with very personal interests who can shape our world through it. I hate the fact that they simply took over human communication and I don't know what to do about it.

It is so ingrained in our way of life, quitting social media feels like quitting social life. I have guardrails around my apps, blocking Instagram during certain hours, accessing social media only on my computer rather than having complete access on my phone, following blogs and news sites through an RSS feed aggregator rather than relying on an algorithm, but it doesn't feel like it's enough. Part of that feeling is the fact it still affects so much of our society. If I'm the only one bothered by it, all these problems will obviously stay and I feel an unjustified anger towards people who just shrug it off. I should be content with controlling my personal use, but when I see the news, the lying, the amplification of far-right ideas, it all feels hopeless.

Did I lose time watching all these hours of YouTube videos, or was I connecting with other humans? I don't think every moment should be productive, who cares if I don't remember all of what I've seen or read, but spending hours on Instagram Reels is clearly mind-numbing. Infinite feeds are designed to keep you hooked, will we ever treat them as addictive activities? Will we ever have any regulation on what these companies are allowed to do? Should I just get along with it? Is social media just a mirror, a way of seeing what our world is made of? Or is it a reason to show the worst part of ourselves, the part that craves attention, that needs to feel important?

These are all the thoughts I've accumulated on this subject for the past few months. It's just a bunch of questions without answers. These sentiments are shared by a lot of people nowadays, it seems to be a big enough market to see more and more companies selling dumb phones. Who knows, maybe some day I'll go back to an old phone with a T9 keyboard and a tiny screen. Or maybe I'll just be in peace with my own dumbed down smartphone and try not to think too much about all of this. In the meantime I'll be watching someone on YouTube trying a retro lifesyle, imagining what useless crap I'd put in my analog bag, and I'll keep wondering if this is worth a try, or if we've all definitely lost our mind to the machine.