Latest news with #Substacks
Vox
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vox
Meet the Substackers who want to save the American novel
is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater. In book world, the summer of 2025 is officially the summer of Substack. Over the past few years, Substack has been slowly building a literary scene, one in which amateurs, relative unknowns, and Pulitzer Prize-winning writers rub shoulders with one another. This spring, a series of writers — perhaps best known for their Substacks — released new fiction, leading to a burst of publicity that the critic, novelist, and Substacker Naomi Kanakia has declared 'Substack summer.' Vox Culture Culture reflects society. Get our best explainers on everything from money to entertainment to what everyone is talking about online. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. 'Is the Next Great American Novel Being Published on Substack?' asked the New Yorker in May. Substack 'has become the premier destination for literary types' unpublished musings,' announced Vulture. Can Substack move sales like BookTok can? No. But it's doing something that, for a certain set, is almost more valuable. It's giving a shot of vitality to a faltering book media ecosystem. It's building a world where everyone reads the London Review of Books, and they all have blogs. 'I myself think of BookTok as an engine for discovery, and I think Substack is an engine for discourse,' said the journalist Adrienne Westenfeld. 'BookTok is a listicle in a way. It's people recommending books that you might not have heard of. It's not as much a place for substantive dialogue about books, which is simply a limitation of short form video.' Related How BookTokers make money Three years ago, Westenfeld wrote about Substack's rising literary scene for Esquire. Now, Esquire has slashed its book coverage, and Westenfeld is writing the Substack companion to a traditionally published nonfiction book: Adam Cohen's The Captain's Dinner. That progression is, in a way, par for the course for the current moment. All the sad young literary men that are said to have disappeared are there on Substack, thriving. With both social media and Google diverting potential readers away from publications, many outlets are no longer investing in arts coverage. The literary crowd who used to hang out on what was known as 'Book Twitter' no longer gathers on what is now X. All the same, there are still people who like reading, and writing, and thinking about books. Right now, a lot of them seem to be on Substack. What strikes me most about the Substack literary scene is just how much it looks like the literary scene of 20 years ago, the one the millennials who populate Substack just missed. The novels these writers put out tend to be sprawling social fiction about the generational foibles of American families à la Jonathan Franzen. They post essays to their Substacks like they're putting blog posts on WordPress, only this time, you can add a paywall. All the sad young literary men that are said to have disappeared are there on Substack, thriving. On Substack, it's 2005 again. Substack is a lifeboat in publishing… or maybe an oar Writers can offer Substack literary credibility, while Substack can offer writers a direct and monetizable connection to their readers. In a literary landscape that feels perennially on the edge, that's a valuable attribute. 'As long as I've wanted to be a writer, as long as I've taken it seriously, it's been mostly bad news,' said the novelist and prolific Substacker Lincoln Michel. 'It's been mostly advances getting lower, articles about people reading less, book review sections closing up, less and less book coverage. Substack feels like a bit of a lifeboat, or maybe an oar tossed to you in your canoe as you're being pushed down to the waterfall. You can build up a following of people who are really interested in books and literature or whatever it is you might be writing about.' Substack summer, however, is not about the established big-name novelists. Substack summer is about writers who are not particularly famous, who found themselves amassing some tens of thousands of followers on Substack and who have recently released longform fiction. They are the ones whose works are getting discussed as central to a new literary scene. In her original 'Substack summer' post, Kanakia identified three novels of the moment as Ross Barkan's Glass Century, John Pistelli's Major Arcana, and Matthew Gasda's The Sleepers. To that list, Kanakia could easily add her own novella, Money Matters, which she published in full on Substack last November. 'No other piece of new fiction I read last year gave me a bigger jolt of readerly delight,' the New Yorker said in May of Money Matters. It wasn't quite Oprah putting Franzen's Corrections in her book club, but it was still more attention than you would reasonably expect. When Barkan and Pistelli's novels came out in April and May, they garnered a surprising amount of attention, Kanakia said. The books were both ambitious enough to be of potential interest to critics — Glass Century follows an adulterous couple from the 1970s into the present, and Major Arcana deals with a death by suicide at a university. Still, both books were from relatively small presses: Belt Publishing for Major Arcana and Tough Poets Press for Glass Century. That kind of book traditionally has a limited publicity budget, which makes it hard to get reviewed in major outlets. (Not that coverage is all that easy for anyone to get, as Michel noted.) Nonetheless, both Major Arcana and Glass Century got reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. A few weeks later, Kanakia's Money Matters, which she published directly to Substack, was written up in the New Yorker. It wasn't quite Oprah putting Franzen's Corrections in her book club, but it was still more attention than you would reasonably expect. 'I was like, 'Something's happening,'' Kanakia says. ''This is going to be big. This is going to be a moment.'' 'Had this novel been released two or three years ago, it would have been completely ignored,' says Barkan of Glass Century. 'Now it's been widely reviewed, and I credit Substack with that fully.' Pistelli's Major Arcana is even more a product of Substack than the others. Pistelli originally serialized it on Substack, and then self-published before Belt Publishing picked it up. The book didn't garner all that much attention when he was serializing it — Pistelli's feeling is that people don't go to Substack to read fiction — but after it came out in print, Substack became the peg for coverage of the book. 'A lot of the reviews, both positive and negative, treated my novel as kind of a test of whether Substack can produce a serious novel, a novel of interest,' said Pistelli. 'The verdict was mixed.' The theory that Substackers have about Substack is this: As social media and search traffic have both collapsed, the kinds of publications that usually give people their book news — newspapers, literary magazines, book specific websites — have struggled and become harder to find. Substack, which delivers directly to readers' inboxes, has emerged to fill the gap in the ecosystem. 'It's very easy to talk to people and it's very easy to get your writing out there,' said Henry Begler, who writes literary criticism on Substack. 'It feels like a real literary scene, which is something I have never been part of.' While there are lots of newsletter social platforms out there, Substack is fairly unique in that it's both a place for newsletters, which tend towards the essayistic, and, with its Twitter clone Notes app, a place for hot takes and conversations. The two formats can feed off each other. 'It creates an ongoing discussion in a longer and more considered form than it would be on Twitter, where you're just trying to get your zingers out,' says Begler. The buzzy authors of the Substack scene are also all associated with the Substack-based literary magazine The Metropolitan Review. Barkan is co-founder and editor-in-chief, and Kanakia, Pistelli, and Gasda have all written for it, as has Begler. 'Basically, we're just a group of friends online who read each other's newsletters and write for some of the same publications,' said Kanakia. For Barkan, the Metropolitan Review is at the center of a new literary movement, which he's dubbed New Romanticism, that is 'properly exploiting the original freedom promised by Internet 1.0 to yank the English language in daring, strange, and thrilling directions.' Barkan's idea is that the kind of publications that used to host such daring, strange, and thrilling speech no longer do, and the Metropolitan Review is stepping into the breach. He argues somewhat optimistically that the Metropolitan Review, which has around 22,000 subscribers, is 'one of the more widely read literary magazines in America.' The combined mythologies of Metropolitan Review and Substack summer have given these writers the beginnings of a cohesive self-identity. The world they've built with that identity is, interestingly, a bit of a throwback. The literary culture of 2005 is alive and well Here are some characteristics of the literary world of 2005: an enchantment with a group of talented young male writers who wrote primarily big social novels and a lot of excitement about the literary possibilities of a nascent blogosphere. Here are some characteristics of the Substack literary scene: a lot of young male writers, a lot of social novels, and a lot of excitement about the literary possibilities of newsletter essays. Glass Century and Major Arcana are both big, sprawling novels that take place over decades, and Glass Century, in particular, reads as though it was written under the influence of Jonathan Franzen. That's a departure from what's been more recently in vogue, like Karl Ove Knausgaard's titanic autofictional saga. 'I think there's a lot of nostalgia for a time when the novel was maybe a more discussed form or a more vital form or trying to capture a lot more of contemporary society.' 'The big trend in the world of literary fiction for the last decade or so was really autofiction, the idea of you would write a slice of life first person narrated often in a kind of transparent, not very adorned prose,' said Pistelli. 'I think there's been some desire to get back to that bigger canvas social novel that has been lost in the autofictional moment.' Literary Substack in general also seems to espouse a desire to return to a time when literature was more culturally ascendant. 'I think there's a lot of nostalgia for a time when the novel was maybe a more discussed form or a more vital form or trying to capture a lot more of contemporary society,' said Begler. 'It's partially just a shift from one mode of thinking to another, and it's partially a nostalgia for your Franzen and your David Foster Wallace and whatever.' This desire is, in its way, very Franzenian. Franzen famously wrote an essay for Harper's in 1996 in which he describes his 'despair about the American novel' after the jingoism of the lead up to the first Gulf War. Franzen thought that television was bad for the novel; he hadn't yet seen what TikTok could do to a person. While the Franzen mode pops up a lot with this crowd, there are outliers to this loose trend. Gasda's Sleeper is very much a product of millennial fiction (detached voice describing the foibles of Brooklyn literati), and Kanakia's work on Substack, which she calls her 'tales,' tends to be sparse, with little attention paid to description or setting. There's also the question of gender. The amount of men in this literary Substack scene is particularly notable in a moment so rich with essays about the disappearance of men who care about and write books. Some observers have drawn a lesson of sorts from this phenomenon: The mainstream literary world alienated men. They had to flee to Substack to build their own safe haven. 'The literary establishment treats male American writers with contempt,' wrote the writer Alex Perez on his Substack last August. His commenters agreed. The answer, they concluded, was building a platform and self publishing. 'I'm a middle-aged, straight, white, conservative, rich male who writes literary fiction. It's like a demographic poo Yahtzee. I don't stand a chance,' wrote one commenter. 'But I have 85K Twitter followers and an email list with thousands of people, so I can self-publish and sell 5,000 copies of anything I write.' 'These aren't manosphere men who are constantly raging against the influence of women on fiction. These are men just writing.' For the Metropolitan Review crowd, the amount of men in Substack's literary scene is mostly value-neutral. 'I do think there's something to the fact that when I got on Substack, I was like, 'These are people that are producing work that I'm actually interested in and I actually find compelling,' and that they were probably majority men,' said Begler. 'Overall, it's a rather welcoming environment for all,' Barkan adds. 'These aren't manosphere men who are constantly raging against the influence of women on fiction. These are men just writing.' Kanakia thinks the narrative about literary white men is more complicated than literary white men let on, but ultimately harmless. 'In 2025 the varieties of men advocating for themselves — most of them are very horrific. This variety is not so bad,' she says. 'If they want a book deal at Scribners, like, fine, if that'll make you happy. That'll be great. I have no problem with that.' In the meantime, literary Substack keeps expanding. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon just signed up. 'It's smart of him,' says Barkan. 'If I were Michael Chabon and was working on a novel, I would be on Substack. I think more literary writers who have platforms already should be there.' The closest antecedent to this moment did not last. The literary moment of 2005 was blown apart the way everything of that era was: under the pressure of the 2008 recession and the so-called Great Awokening, under the slow collapse of the blogosphere as social media took off — and everything that came along with them. Will the same thing happen to this crowd? It's hard to know for sure this early. At least for right now, Substack is having its summer.
Axios
6 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
How many journalists cover Philly
Whenever I think about reporting, two edicts come to mind: Journalism is a daily crisis memorialized, and it's about doing the best for the most. That's a mashup of what one of my Daily Lobo colleagues told me early on in my career, and I've carried it with me as a guiding star. Why it matters: There are fewer reporters across the country doing the best for the most. And that makes every day we continue to churn out newspapers, newsletters, Substacks, whatever your medium, even more of a daily crisis memorialized. Driving the news: The U.S. now has 8.2 "local journalist equivalents" (LJEs) for every 100,000 people, down 75% from 2002 on average, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick reports. That's according to the Local Journalist Index 2025 from Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News, a local journalism nonprofit. The big picture: About two-thirds of U.S. counties have a below-average number of local journalists, per the index, an ambitious project aiming to illustrate "the stunning collapse in local reporting." To crib Biggie: Less journalism, more problems. You can draw a pretty strong line between the lack of local reporting and our country's biggest problems: more polarization, less civic engagement, and not enough fact-driven gatekeepers to watchdog corruptible public officials and help us sift through the absolute tsunami of information we have available at the click of a mouse. Threat level: Americans could once dutifully rely on the Big Three — ABC, NBC and CBS — to set the agenda on what was important. Now with the saturation of social media, it's turning into Big Me — opinion makers and slant artists delivering hot takes for clicks rather than community good. Yes, but: Philly's lucky that we're bucking the trend. We have about 13 journalists per every 100,000 people, or about 201 total. And our collar counties — Bucks (6.5), Montgomery (8.2) and Delaware (7.9) — are toughing it out. The latest: It doesn't help when local public media outlets like WHYY must scrap to plug holes after Congress clawed back $1.1 billion in federal funding. State of play: Sometimes the absence of sunlight makes you realize how much you miss those muckrakers doing the disinfecting. Our scrappy team at Axios Philly does our best to bring you the most. Sometimes that's being a check on the local media ecosystem, while feeding you a steady diet of the biggest news in our region — from the garbage strike to the inner workings of the Parker administration to SEPTA's existential crisis. Mom and Dad always said you have to eat your vegetables (that's those stories you need to be a healthy, engaged citizen), but we also can't go without a little dessert and a brewski or two to make it all go down.
North Wales Live
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- North Wales Live
Sign up to The Cricket Drop - our new cricket newsletter on Substack
A brand new newsletter is bringing you the biggest news and headlines from around the world of cricket, whether it's T20, Test, One-Day Internationals, County Championship, The Hundred or IPL. The brainchild of James Rodger, a lifelong cricket fan with a season ticket at Edgbaston Cricket Ground, The Cricket Drop - available on Substack - strips away ads, the noise, paywalls and more to give you the very best opinion, features, views and news from cricket writers across the globe. The Cricket Drop is your new weekly cricket newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox. With one eye firmly on this summer's domestic season and the other on the blockbuster Ashes series this November and December, it's set to become essential reading for fans in England, Australia and beyond. James said: 'I have bored my wife to tears with Test Match Special on in the car, and Sky Sports on in the house - so it seemed high time I channel my passion into something more creative. "I was an avid cricketer in my youth - so if you want to support my efforts to turn my career-best 21 not out into a more meaningful endeavour, I'd love you to subscribe to The Cricket Drop. After all, it's free!" James added: "There is so much fantastic cricket writing out there - from Substacks, to blogs, to broadsheet writers and tabloid reporters. It's all out there waiting for you - if only you could strip away the noise and find it. That's what I want The Cricket Drop to be about: the very best (and biggest) of the sport, no matter what format you prefer to watch." What's in each edition? Each newsletter will feature regular sections such as the week's biggest headlines, a round-up from the English domestic scene (be it County Championship, The Hundred, T20 Blast or Women's One-Day Cup), all the biggest headlines from around the world (India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean and beyond), and rotating sections such as… The upcoming week's fixtures Ashes Watch: Which England stars are out of form? Which County Championship cricketers are putting themselves in conversation for a starting berth in Australia (or a plane ticket Down Under, at least)? Throwback: A journey down memory lane, through video, pictures, news article and more. The Cricket Drop Community Noticeboard: Got a story? An event to promote? A book coming out? Get in touch here. Quote of the Day: Has Ben Stokes called Harry Brook 'dumb' again? Has Ben Duckett got out for 98 and told Sky Sports he 'doesn't care'? Is Sir Ian Botham angry that bananas are bendy? Ticket Drop: Are tickets on sale for the Ashes? The Pataudi Trophy? T20 Finals Day? Are The Barmy Army selling packages to Barbados? We'll have the latest for you. Podcast and video watch: Prefer your cricket news in multimedia form? Then we'll be bringing you all the essential listening - and watching - of the week. How do I sign up to The Cricket Drop? The Cricket Drop will be published on Substack, an independent platform with no ads, making for a cleaner reading experience than on many other websites. You can read the newsletter there on desktop or the app, or simply from your email inbox. So not only do you not have to go searching for the news itself – or wait for the algorithm to decide this is what you might like to see – you don't even have to search for the newsletter. Once it's live it's sent directly to you to read at your leisure. Sign up here or fill in the email box below;
Boston Globe
21-02-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
I want to DM her on Substack
I guess I'm confused about can I DM her to try to get to know her better? Not to initiate any inappropriate relationship but just for building an online friendship. I don't want to seem creepy. NOT CREEPY, I SWEAR Related : A. You've already gone back and forth with comments. I think a direct message is fine. Just make sure you're clear about who you are and what you want. There are ways to say plenty in just a few words. As in, 'Your post about squash reminded me of the time my wife and I tried to be vegan for a week.' (I'm pretending it's a cooking Substack thing.) You can tell her you're not sure about the etiquette of communicating this way, and that you don't want to be weird. Sometimes it's best when people say, 'I hope this is OK! Just trying to be friends!' Advertisement We're all looking for community. If you find excellent people on Instagram or Substack, that's great. Take small steps, keep the communication low-stakes, and if there's no response, let it go. One more thought: You might find that a few DMs and occasional comments from this person are enough. I read some columnists and listen to a bunch of podcasts, and sometimes I think, 'I could totally be friends with this person in real life.' But when I'm honest with myself, the parasocial relationship I have with them is actually enough — and quite lovely. I'm happy to listen, read, like them, and move on. You can also just be someone's very loyal audience, with minimal interaction. MEREDITH Related : READERS RESPOND: Why is this a big deal? I direct-message a few Substacks of different writers and scientists whose work I admire. I've never for a second thought there was anything creepy or nefarious about it. I think it comes down to what exactly you find 'interesting' about this person. There's a world of difference between 'That recipe sounds great' and 'You look great in high heels.' Advertisement EMPRESSETHEL ^Yes, my 80-year-old dad talks to people all the time — men and women, online and on the phone — about local politics in North Carolina and the problems with the cleanliness of the local water. But he knows he's not being creepy, and my mom knows he has these discussions, and she encourages him to keep him busy. It's no secret — and never has my dad worried that he's being creepy. So I think the fact that this [letter writer] is worried could mean something is not quite above board here. KWINTERS1 As long as you aren't 'secretly' hoping for more and don't hide this from your family, it's no big deal. Maybe make it a point to make sure your wife knows you are doing this in order to be completely transparent. JSMUS Related : I'm confused WHY you want to get to know her better. A friendship? I think you need to tread carefully because you seem infatuated and you're married. I think purposely crossing the line on social media when you're married for no specific reason (for example, it doesn't sound like a professional collaboration) does seem a tad too much. I think you need to be honest with yourself about what you're hoping to achieve. BKLYNMOM I would be very interested in what kind of subject matter this woman posts about and the content of the direct messages so far. For example, if you were talking about politics or some niche kind of entertainment you both like that a lot of people aren't that into, maybe that's fine. If she posts mostly swimsuit pictures of herself and you are just kidding yourself that you are only interested in friendship, then stop bothering her. Ask yourself if you are hiding this from your wife. If you are, you're probably a creep. Advertisement LEGALLYLIZ2017 Imagine that your wife is following a handsome young athlete who plays for one of your local professional sports teams. And is proposing to do what you are. How would you like to hear that? Stop trying to kid yourself. Invest that time on IG into your wife (and kids, if applicable). GDCATCH I guess I am mildly surprised by all the 'you better tell your wife about it!' comments. Every married person has impure thoughts about people who are not their spouse. It is really weird to confess every random [interest] to your partner! … I mean, whatever. Message her if you want. Get your $50 worth out of that subscription. But understand that AT LEAST 100 other guys are doing the same thing. You are not going to 'get to know her better.' She interacts with people in the comments because that is her job. STRIPEY-CAT Send your own relationship and dating questions to or Catch new episodes of wherever you listen to podcasts. Column and comments are edited and reprinted from .
CNN
16-02-2025
- CNN
What I found when I tried to unplug from social media
I noticed the compulsive behaviors first. The way, at any pause or break in my day, my finger clicked the Instagram or X app on my phone, seemingly without my consent. Eating a snack? Click. Sitting on the toilet? Click. In bed, in the moments before falling asleep? Click again. Every time the app began to load, I yelped, closed it in a frenzy and switched over to my email or, in one very desperate case, the weather app. Unplugging from social media was proving harder than I expected. Still, any attempts at unplugging for me would be inherently temporary — I use the apps almost daily as part of my job, making fully disconnecting from Big Tech a lost cause. But that's something a number of social media users have been trying to do, especially after Meta and its founder Mark Zuckerberg have aligned with President Donald Trump — foregoing fact-checkers and incorporating two Trump allies into high positions in the company. Many on the left have called for a boycott of Meta products Instagram and Facebook, while others have taken the opportunity to simply re-evaluate their relationship to social media and, by extension, Big Tech. The movement to boycott Meta is only the latest iteration of an ongoing cultural shift. In November, following Trump's election, millions of users joined Bluesky, a nearly identical app to pre-Elon Musk X, right down to the shade of blue. Their reasoning was largely due to Musk's own political alliance with Trump, which had turned the once-innovative social website into a campaign platform for the right. Which brings us to this moment. While attempting to ditch social media isn't necessarily a new trend — the potential dangers of these websites have long been documented, from mental health woes to privacy concerns — there is now an increasing skepticism around the politics of Big Tech specifically, leading people to find alternatives (i.e. Bluesky) or simply hang it up altogether. But in 2025, social media is so ingrained in our society. These websites have woven themselves not only into the fabric of how we socialize, but of how we communicate as a whole. Is unplugging really possible? I was skeptical. So, at least temporarily, I decided to give it a try. If nothing else, giving up social media — which for me meant X, Facebook and Instagram, the only three sites I regularly use — was an embarrassing window into all the ways I lean on the apps as part of my regular routine. It wasn't just to fill the empty space in my days; I reached for these apps to browse discounted vintage furniture (Facebook Marketplace), to send cringey jokes to friends (X), or to check the hours of a favorite pop-up restaurant (Instagram). It was confusing. On one hand, I could recognize the dangerous way endlessly scrolling, searching for another hit of dopamine, was damaging my quality of life. (In place of social media, I began to spend an unnatural amount of time checking email, finally reading all those Substacks I'm subscribed to). On the other hand: How else could I get this useful information while also staying in touch with long-distance friends? (Not to mention the ungodly amount of things somehow connected to Facebook/Meta accounts – Spotify?!) ...Apple Podcasts Spotify Pandora TuneIn iHeart Radio Amazon RSS I turned to my friend Marissa Butler, an independent bookseller who, like me, is an avid social media user in her late 20s. After Meta announced changes to its fact-checking policy, she posted on Instagram Stories asking her circle how they were thinking about their social media use. Were they deleting Meta apps or social media altogether? Were they re-evaluating their usage? Or were they just continuing as normal? Some people said they were going to give Bluesky a try. Others had already left Instagram, having quit as soon as the news broke. But about 90% of her friends, she said, were just as unsure as she was. 'It also made me think, if we could quit social media in general — like we all would honestly probably love to do — what are we losing connection-wise?' she asked. That ability to connect is social media's great saving grace, the quality that constantly gets named when defending these apps' existence. For all their faults, how else could we interact with people from around the world? It's not just discovering that someone you had a single class with in college just had a baby (although it is for that, too). 'Buy nothing' groups help locals trade and barter for goods; people fundraise and share mutual aid opportunities; citizen journalists in Palestine even used it to document the war. 'Social media platforms, in and of themselves, can be seen as intrinsically neutral,' said Daniel Miller, director of University College London's Centre for Digital Anthropology. While Musk's intervention in X is a special case, 'by and large, what these sites become is determined by users.' And every user's relationship with social media can be different. Miller, who has worked with terminally ill patients in hospice, pointed out that having access to social media becomes all the more valuable for patients as they become less mobile. Barred from real-life social interaction because of their health, virtual social interaction becomes a saving grace. 'Social media is used for a thousand different things,' Miller said. 'You're going to like some of them, not like some of them. But what it is now is all of those things.' Miller's words echoed in my mind. At this point, my compulsive reaching for my phone had already begun to decline, but I wondered what long-term unplugging would look like, particularly for my long-distance friendships. Sure, I could always give friends a call, but it's far easier to comment on an Instagram post once in a while than commit to a 30-minute catch up. My circle would inevitably shrink. Was that a consequence I was ready to accept? Jennifer Oaks, a 48-year-old nurse, was one of the thousands who created a Bluesky account the day after the election. Ideally, she told me, she would go ahead and get off all social media. It's just not good for her mental health, she said. Every time she opened X, she felt like she was being bombarded with things that made her angry or upset. The constant scrolling, she said, was getting to her. 'I just feel like I'm just wasting my life on this social media,' Oaks said. 'It's just brain rot.' Oaks isn't alone in her feelings. In the 2019 self-help book 'Digital Minimalism,' computer scientist Cal Newport wrote about our increasing reliance on these websites and how to curb our usage. 'Increasingly, (these technologies) dictate how we behave and how we feel, and somehow coerce us to use them more than we think is healthy, often at the expense of other activities we find more valuable,' Newport wrote. Therein lies the problem, at least as I saw it just 48 hours into my fast. Social media is both brain rot and a source of connection and information. The difference between the two, it seemed, depended on me. I found myself wanting to scroll during lengthy phone calls and television commercial breaks. But I also wished I could see what my favorite journalists were talking about on X, or check what sales my favorite small, independent brands were having (a very niche thing I use Instagram for: the abundant temporary sales on Stories). 'It's like a centralized place to get a lot of things, which is an improvement on having to go around and find all these things individually or call and just check around,' Butler said. 'There is no real way to substitute that.' Community bulletin boards have diminished, along with most print neighborhood newsletters. Ironically, we've replaced them with Facebook community pages and Nextdoor groups (another form of social media, if we're being honest). There's a growing Luddite movement among some teenagers, choosing — out of frustration with the grip social media has on society — to go without those sites and other modern technology. I admire them. But I couldn't help but feel like that's an easier choice to make in high school, when your community is largely confined to school. My friends and family live in other states, even other countries. Keeping up takes real work. And how else do people find their favorite small businesses? Artists? Brands? Without social media, this knowledge can become more elusive. I discovered At Heart Panadería, a pop-up bakery in Atlanta that became a mainstay of my diet last year, through Instagram. Chef and owner Teresa Finney, 40, has been on some sort of social media since she was a teen, she said. But today's social media — with its rapid acceleration of AI and other concerns — bums her out. In recent weeks, she's grappled with her Instagram usage, but leaving social media doesn't make sense for her, she said, both personally and professionally. She'd miss seeing the digital lives of her family and friends. And while she does block Instagram for certain hours of the day, she still enjoys posting updates about her life and the bakery (Finney uses the app almost as an extension of a website, posting updates on menu changes, news about pop-ups and pictures of her cakes). 'Leaving Instagram, though very tempting at times, would leave a big lack that I'm not at this point ready to live with,' Finney said. As my period of social media abstinence came to an end, I wondered if three days was too short of a time. It certainly isn't enough time to break a habit, and while my compulsions had plummeted, I still caught myself trying to open the apps. Social media is meant to be addictive — that much is proven. From the constant notifications to the stream of never-ending content, there's always — for better or worse — something new to see. Did it have to be this way? For years, watchdogs have noted tech companies have the power to control their platforms' misinformation, hate speech, and other rampant ills that fester on social media. While wellness experts have told us ways to make our specific feeds less toxic (unfollowing people we don't like; using the mute button), our efforts mean little without systemic changes. And it's clear that these apps have intentions beyond just being a tool of connection; one scroll through my redownloaded Instagram, and I was reminded of how much the app has become a breeding ground for brands (ones the algorithm thinks I'll enjoy) hawking their products. I knew going without social media would be a sacrifice; I didn't realize how much engaging with it was, too. I was always going to be fighting the urge to endlessly immerse myself in the brain rotting scroll, probably at the expense of my data. If these big social media apps were truly just a way to stay in touch with people, why do so many people feel compelled to leave? (Few have complained about needing a BeReal break.) Butler has a healthier approach than I do. She told me she tries to make sure she's using social media intentionally, like to message someone whose number she doesn't have or to see what a specific person has been up to, rather than just scrolling out of habit. Instead of sending memes back and forth, wouldn't it be more fulfilling to get a voice note from a friend, or even just a text? She's been playing with that, seeing how she can replicate the feelings of being on social media while still regulating her use. 'The solution is going to be uncomfortable,' Butler said. 'We're going to be a little less informed than we were before.' Seventy-two hours in, I felt a little uncomfortable. A little freer, too. Unplugging is possible. Here's the problem: Social media isn't going away, Miller said. It's become too much of a part of the way we interact. People (like me) might use social media in detrimental ways, but they also use social media to actually be social. If Miller wanted to announce a conference on X, he has 12,000 followers on the site who might hear about it, he said. How else would he reach those people? 'People who have benefitted, in terms of their access to information or the ability to disseminate information, why would they want to leave it?' Miller said. But is that access, that potential benefit, worth all of the downsides? Wouldn't it be nice for my tastes not to be dictated by an algorithm; to find connection not just within these apps, but beyond them? The answers will be different for everyone. Figuring out how to engage with social media in a healthy way will be a constant balancing act – one that may look different at different stages. (Taking a break from some platforms is a common solution: In 2023, 60% of US adults reported taking a hiatus from X, according to the Pew Research Center, although only a quarter said they were likely to stop using it completely.) As I logged into my various accounts again, I remembered I meant to follow a friend who was moving in a few weeks to another state. I typed her name into the search bar and hit request, settling in with the knowledge that our current jovial relationship would likely diminish to just this: comments and messages through an app. Maybe that's better than nothing. Or maybe I'll do the seemingly impossible and give her a call.
