extremely online (+ book launch 🚀)

The book is out today! Feels good, man. To anyone out there who’s thinking of writing a book, my number one tip is this: ask for help. Couldn’t have done this without all the incredible people (including some of you) who supported me over the past year. Order it now via Amazon.com / Amazon.ca, Barnes & Noble, Indigo, Kobo, Bookshop.org (eBook), or Apple, and leave a review if you can. 🙏🏽

As today was approaching, it somehow didn’t feel right to celebrate a book about enjoying tech mindfully by doing something I definitely would not enjoy: forcing myself to pop on a blazer in front of a stack of books and act all professional-like.

So I decided to do something different. I challenged myself to live and breathe the book’s message by engaging more deeply with social media than I have for a long time.

You see, I’m not a big social media user. Sure, I’m here on email, and I’ve used a lot of Twitter/X over the years. And LinkedIn has been a big part of my professional life. But I’ve rarely touched things like Instagram, SnapChat, and TikTok. Ever since I quit Facebook over a decade ago, I’ve opted out of new platforms.

These past two weeks, I celebrated the book launch by experimenting with being “extremely online”, as my friend Tasshin calls it. I wanted to do it mindfully, in a way that wouldn’t make me too compulsive or self-conscious or hypervigilant. I wanted to see if I could find more joy, meaning, purpose, and connection online, starting on Instagram, and then on TikTok.

You can use the links above to see my posts and follow along if you’d like. Here’s a summary of my insights from the journey so far:

Dorito Hearts

The likes and hearts feel good. Sometimes we pretend that's not the case. It's something we all feel but are almost ashamed to admit. Let’s admit it: It feels nice when someone puts a heart on your post! Especially when it's from someone you recognize - Instagram brought a few people from previous chapters of life into my world again.

Once you accept that it feels good, you can become more aware of what happens next. Quickly after the heart comes in, you feel unsatisfied somehow, like you need another one, and then you start checking for more hearts. They’re like Doritos - very satisfying, but once you swallow, your mouth is just craving that satisfaction again.

Comments and DMs provide a way more lasting positive experience. They feel like a deeper connection, especially when they’re coming from people whose names mean something to you. I started to ignore the numbers (using Arc’s boosts to remove them, actually), and prioritized more genuine interactions.

Positive, Reciprocal, Authentic In-groups

Soon after the experiment started, there was a small in-group who were engaging with every post, DMing, and I even had one 40-minute phone call with an old friend. It felt like the early days of social media again, when it was a fun springboard to deeper connection without all the status games.

I realized that this is the way I personally get genuine connection online. When I find a group where the relationship feels reciprocal, trust emerges. When you know you're going to get some replies and comments from specific people, posting feels worth it. It’s almost like a group chat.

As this dawned on me, I realized that I’ve been using Twitter all these years because I have an in-group of spiritual tech people there. And on LinkedIn, I have a community of colleagues who are mission-aligned.

I also realized that the inverse is true. A decade ago, I disabled Facebook precisely because it was failing to provide me with this kind of in-group. It just became a mash-up of people from different areas of life.

A-ha! If I want to use social media well, maybe this is what I’m looking for: a positive, reciprocal, authentic in-group.

A Social Hangover

It wasn’t all gravy, though. Since Instagram connected me with old friends who I’ve known in-person, I felt like I wanted to hang out with them, but I couldn’t.

I’m extroverted, living in a stage of life where a lot of big social events are harder. We've got a young kid and moved out to a smaller town, and I miss that energy of face-to-face with old friends. Since I have an emotional need for deeper connection right now, there was a bit of a hangover to all this.

This pattern felt like the primordial soup of social media loneliness syndrome. You’re lonely in real life, so you get hooked on the digital illusion of connection. It helps, but it never fully satisfies your need.

Social Feedback and Craving

For thousands of years, we evolved to have responsive, reciprocal relationships. You say something and you get immediate feedback via words or even facial expression. And when you're not getting the feedback you need, it feels uncomfortable, and sometimes even like conflict.

With social media, this discomfort is kind of built-in. You make a post and, unless you’re some massive influencer, you don't get any immediate feedback. There’s a vacuum. So you naturally start to crave that feedback, refreshing the page, checking constantly for more Doritos. The one-to-many nature of these platforms doesn’t help, as no one feels any social pressure to respond.

Over time, you start to ask yourself, "what do I need to do to make better posts that get more feedback?" You start changing who you are to fill this hole, and especially if you're not getting any reciprocal relationships in person, it can be really isolating.

Sharing online is actually such a beautiful thing, but it’s hard to stay authentic with it when you’re not getting the feedback you need to feel okay. Especially if you’re sharing something vulnerable or trying to express yourself creatively. The feed throws salt in the wound when it constantly shows you other people who seem to be getting the exact kind of feedback you’re longing for.

Algorithmic Transparency is Key

After a week on Instagram, I decided to try TikTok. In my first foray, the app basically fed me softcore porn in disguise. I also saw a ton of ads trying to get me to pay to boost my posts. These felt like dark patterns. The platform was intentionally exploiting my sexual and social cravings from the first minute. It gave me the serious ick.

I immediately abandoned the TikTok plan and posted on Instagram about it. Two friends told me I needed to give it more of a chance and offered some tips. That felt edgy, which meant it was probably a good idea for this experiment’s sake.

I took their advice to spend a solid hour on the first day grooming my feed: TikTok allows you to coach the algorithm in plain text, requesting what you want more or less of. That experience led me to a much more entertaining and joyful experience.

It wasn’t authentic connection, but it was entertainment. It was a joy! I laughed out loud at this #hopecore post at least 5 times. This points at the need for more algorithmic transparency. The more we can see why feeds are promoting some posts over others, and the more we can exert agency in grooming those feeds towards our higher intentions, the better.

The Core Power of the Feed

Once I had a solid TikTok feed going, I noticed it’s incredible ability to narrow the aperture of my attention. Trying to meditate while using TikTok revealed to me the core power of the feed. The fundamental thing that makes it hard to have a healthy relationship with TikTok is that it’s so compelling that it narrows your attention and collapses the world around you. Your peripheral vision just disappears.

That noticing actually gave me more hope that I would be able to use it mindfully. We meditators are experts with attention, right? Let’s do this.

TikTok offers screen time limits. As anyone who’s tried these before can attest, they’re easy to ignore. But once I saw this attentional narrowing effect, I was able to build some healthier habits. I set an intention that whenever I hit the limit, I’d pause for a second to zoom out and look around the room, broadening into my peripheral vision zen-style for a couple of breaths.

It worked surprisingly well. I found myself making very intentional choices every 10 minutes about whether I wanted to continue or stop. I can honestly say I haven’t breezed through a screen time reminder yet. Mindlessness is the enemy here, not TikTok (though it’s incredible pull certainly isn’t helping).

The Numbers Are Misleading

When you post on Instagram or TikTok, you see the number of how many people viewed your post. It's validating but also a total illusion. If you jump into the TikTok studio analytics for example, you’ll see that even if most people only watched it for 1 or 2 seconds, it still counts as a view.

So we crave social feedback, and social media is validating us with empty calories. Oh, now I’m seeing what’s really going on here. It’s clearly a fool’s game to try and fill our hearts with these kinds of little white lies.

Social Performance Media

As I browsed around the Creator Studio tools a bit more, I realized that TikTok isn’t ‘social’ media at all. It’s a media and performance environment. The dashboard reminds me a lot of when we launch a product or business and you’re trying to track and optimize. That’s fine! But it’s not social.

I mean, I get that all identity is a performance, but shelving that for a second, social media has evolved to be less about authentic reciprocal relationships, and more about performance. In fact, performance is a healthy way to ask for attention, but as method actors can confirm, if you let that erode your authentic sense of self, it can lead to problems.

I realized that TikTok would probably bring me more joy if I brought out my musical instruments instead of trying to find authentic relationships with it. I flirted with this by sharing some clips of me drumming and playing guitar and hypothesis confirmed: it felt great.

Where I’m At Now

Social media is extremely sticky. TikTok especially. But after these two weeks of meditating with it, I’m convinced that mindfulness does indeed offer a skillset to enjoy it without getting stuck. If you pay attention to the nuances of how it manipulates your attention, you can find balance with it.

It’s ironic, because it’s often in mindfulness circles where people are starting to demonize tech. Yet these are the communities of practice who teach the exact skills we all need to thrive in the 21st century. As I put it in the book, “the next generation of mindfulness teachers must teach us not to run away from digital life but to master it as part of who we are.”