A year after the covid pandemic swept across the world and we all began to live online, I started noticing that my eyes would hurt after scrolling on Instagram. I thought I was decompressing at night by sitting on my couch on my phone, but I found that afterwards I usually had a slight headache. These unsettling symptoms gradually worsened until I realized that social media was literally sapping my strength. It’s now been two years since I got off Instagram, and a few months without Facebook, and let me tell you, I haven’t looked back.
The other day, a friend and I were sitting at the playground watching our kids on the monkey bars, when she said to me, “You have to see this video on TikTok!”
“No, actually,” I politely responded, “I don’t!”
You might think the contemporary phenomena of social media and its effect on our mental health (which has been shown by studies to be overwhelmingly negative) is a modern issue. In reality, the fact that everything we see, hear, and read burrows into our minds and takes up space in our hearts actually goes back to the very beginning of humankind.
You see, G-d placed an alluring, delicious tree in the Garden of Eden—the Tree of Knowledge. But Adam and Eve weren’t interested in it. When the snake came to Eve, he said, “Didn’t G-d say you can’t eat from the trees of the garden?” I imagine Eve looking at him curiously, saying “No, we can eat the fruit of the trees.” For there were indeed many trees of delicious fruit that Adam and Eve could eat from. It was only the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that was off-limits. The snake was the manifestation of this evil in the garden and it irked him that Adam and Eve were totally ignoring him! They knew nothing about evil. So, he tricked Eve into desiring its fruit, and once she and Adam ate it, evil became part of them.
People are not like angels. Angels, according to the mystical writings, can know about evil but keep it at an arm's length. Ok, so it exists, but what does it have to do with them? They are angels. Humans, however, once exposed to evil couldn’t keep it out. It was sucked into their hearts and minds, filling them with selfish desires. Then, and now, it would take great battle and determination to overcome.
Am I being extreme by calling social media evil? I think not. I will admit that there are a few special people who can use it as a platform to spread goodness, but for the vast majority of people it is at best a waste of time and at its worst draws us into negativity. And here is the thing with negativity, evil’s first cousin: once you know about it, it gets inside of you. Once you see the upsetting video you can’t unsee it. Once you feel jealous of someone else’s beautiful house or perfect (usually fake) body, you can’t not want what they have. Just like Adam and Eve, once you know about evil, you must now battle to kick it out. Here is where I make a radical suggestion: What if I stopped knowing about so much? What if I chose to “be in the dark”?
So now I am working on replacing this darkness with light—with fun, fulfilling, positive activities. Here are my suggestions, if you are interested in unplugging, on how to go about it and what to replace it with.
- Delete all the apps from your phone, that’s the first step. Then, block the websites on your phone browser. If you like to use some neutral aspects of social media (I sometimes get great free stuff on a local Facebook page), keep it available on your desktop to check once in a while. It’s really the phone that gets us. I mean it follows us around … or do we follow it?
- Make your phone boring. No beeps, bings, or buzzes. No little red numbers telling you something “important” awaits you. No notifications. You get the drill.
- Lose your phone on purpose, all the time. I like to set my phone down in random places in my house so I forget where it is. Then I only go to find it when I actually need to message someone or call my mother. When it is sitting in front of you, if you listen really hard, you can hear a little hiss, “Don’t you want to pick me up?”
- Now the fun part. But I need to go on social media to relax! Don’t I? What else could I do at night, when the kids are asleep or work is done, and I want to “zone out”? I feel you. Here are some ideas:
- Listen to podcasts! If you are like me and get bored just listening, then draw or doodle to keep your hands busy.
- Go for a nighttime walk. Take deep breaths. Look at the night sky.
- Message old friends. My husband loves doing this and he has reconnected with some interesting people. Send voice notes to people who live in different time zones and have an asynchronous conversation.
- Grab a family member and look at old pictures. Laugh at how bad your hair looked. The iPhone will even make little videos for you to watch. I love remembering family trips and how they always involve some sort of mini-disaster (is that just me?).
- The options are endless, really. Read, journal, do some stretching, even a workout. Take a bath, organize your pantry, get creative—find a hobby! Scrapbook! Go crazy.
Now, back to the Garden of Eden. I’ve always been curious why Adam and Eve had to eat from the tree. Surely, G-d had a bigger plan when he told them not to. But when I tell my toddler he can’t have marshmallows, you bet he wants them even more.
It turns out that evil does have a place in the world. It is our job to sift out the good from the bad so that only the good remains.
But there was an alternative. The Alter Rebbe, the founder of Chabad, explains that Adam and Eve radiated so much goodness that if they hadn’t eaten from the tree, any bad in the world would have been completely subsumed in their light like a pillar of fire attracting smaller flames.1
What I am suggesting is to make yourself into that pillar of light. Sure, distance yourself from sources of negativity. But the real work is to increase our light, to replace negativity with positivity. What in your life is draining your energy? Where can you pull back and shift your focus away from evil and badness? For me, that is social media, but maybe for you, it is a complaining coworker or even having an internet company with terrible customer service. Flip the script and share with your complaining coworker all the reasons to be grateful or simply practice your own gratitude in the face of complaints.
Our phones are a particularly tricky portal into what’s happening in the world. They can show us the best of humanity or the worst. I am trying my hardest to live in the light and look for the good. Maybe I’ve inspired you to do the same.
