A photo of my Japanese weekly notes
Social media companies advertise themselves with a heavy emphasis on the “social” side. They show people having the most hilarious of times with friends, outside, enjoying parties, festivals, and generally having a jolly good time. The reality, though, for lots of people couldn’t be further from that. At least in my experience, social media usage involves slouching on the couch, with a posture growing more prawn-like by the minute, until I’m slack-jawed and half on the floor. I eventually come around, feeling confused, wondering what on earth happened to the last hour. I got lost in the scroll. There was nothing social about it, I was just being hammered with advertisements and content designed to give me a dopamine spike. I hate it, but I find that it continues to pull me in.
This isn’t what I imagined the internet would be like. I think I imagined something closer to the advertisements these social media companies show. A way to create genuine connections with other humans. A way to learn more about other cultures and languages. I remember having such excitement at the possibility of talking to people on the other side of the world.
But the internet is the same internet we’ve had all along. It’s being mis-used by money hungry pigs, yes, but the underlying technology is there for us to do all the things we were excited about when we were young(er). I don’t know why it took me so long to realise this.
And so about a year ago I started to reclaim the internet in my own way. It’s not perfect. I still use Instagram and still get barraged by algorithmically-selected slop, but I made some changes. The main change is that I removed one-way communication. Celebrities are not interested in me and were never going to reply to that “Happy birthday” message anyway. Instead of celebrities, I started to follow small accounts with similar interests to me. I’ve always wanted to learn Japanese, and so whenever I unfollowed a celebrity, I followed a Japanese dog account with a few hundred followers instead. I started taking Japanese lessons and tried my best to engage with interesting people.
Before long I was creating friendships with real humans on the other side of the world, which is everything I wanted from the internet when I was younger. I’ve learned some really interesting things too, like in Japan when a dog pees in the street, the owner will pour some water on the path to clean it up. They also love dressing their dogs up and often push them around in little buggies. Sometimes they even have the dog’s name printed on a big sign that’s attached to the buggy. It’s both very cute and fascinating to me.
Every week I share an image of my (very badly written) Japanese notes and Japanese people take the time to read it and chat with me about it. This year we’re even exchanging Christmas cards! It’s a completely different experience to the one I had previously sleepwalked into and I’m really glad I decided to shake things up.
Because I’m using Instagram though I find that I’m still susceptible to Doom Scrolling. For this I’ve started using Opal to control my screen time. I give myself strict times of day that I’m allowed to open social media apps, which I’m finding helps me a lot.
And so to summarise, I’m reclaiming the internet by:
- Favouring two-way communication over one-way communication
- Controlling screen time
Maybe you’re not interested in following random Japanese dog accounts, but perhaps there’s another way for you to have a more intentional experience that would help you reclaim the internet in your own way. I’d be curious to hear what your version looks like!
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