Recalibration Required
Returning Attention to Where It Belongs
My eldest son has been wanting a phone for some time now.
Years ago, I set a rule for all of my kids: if they want a phone, they need to read a couple articles by
on tech and mental health (this one in particular), and then write a report on what they learned and how they planned to use technology differently. From that, I would turn the report into a contract for them to agree to, and purchase them a phone in return for agreeing to the terms they set for themselves.I reasoned that if they could thoughtfully engage with that material and write something clear, they were mature enough to handle a phone.
My son recently finished that assignment.
It took him a week, with multiple revisions, but he stuck with it.
And I’m quite impressed by his determination and the end result of his work.
He earned the phone.
And yet, I’m still a little scared.
Last week he asked me if he could install Facebook.
I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Marketplace,” he said. “I want to sell things. Make some money.”
I loved that part… the entrepreneurial spark, the initiative, the eye for opportunity.
But still: Facebook?
He rolled his eyes. “Dad… I don’t want to use it like that. I’m not old.”
Fair point. Apparently TikTok is cooler. (Which… is even scarier?)
Still, I’m wary. So before I agreed to install the app, I asked him to sit with me and watch The Social Dilemma – the Tristan Harris documentary from 2020. For those who haven’t seen it, here is the story in a nutshell: most of the technology we use today (especially social media) is designed to manipulate our attention. Over time, that gradual shift has profound consequences for society – ones we should care about and counterbalance. Even if you’ve seen it before, it’s worth revisiting (here’s a link for a refresher).
We watched it together this weekend, and my son sat through the whole thing without complaining (I consider that a parenting win on its own).
While he didn’t say much afterward, I could tell he was tracking.
For me, rewatching it landed harder than I expected.
I remember seeing it back in 2020 and found it impactful then. But this time, almost five years later, it felt less like a warning and more like a reckoning.
At the end of the film, Tristan reflects:
“I mean, it seems kind of crazy, right?
It’s like the fundamental way that this stuff is designed…
Isn't going in a good direction.
Like, the entire thing.
So, it sounds crazy to say we need to change all that, but that’s what we need to do.”
And then the film crew asks him: “Do you think we’re going to get there?”
His response: “We have to.”
…
So… have we?
Have we heeded the warnings?
Have we curtailed the algorithms?
Have we redesigned tech interfaces to be less manipulative and addictive?
Have we put safety checks in place to make sure we don’t have unforeseen run-away consequences?
Public awareness may have grown.
But the fundamental direction hasn’t changed.
I could even argue that it’s gotten worse.
What’s happened since the film to the people examining these systems? There are still a few of them out there, but many of them have been laid off. Entire teams focused on risk and ethics have been dismantled in the name of efficiency. Many of the designers who tried to make the interfaces less addictive… downsized, consolidated.
And we’ve replaced them with… AI reviewing AI.
Algorithms built to optimize algorithms.
No, it hasn’t gotten better. It’s gotten sneakier.
I deleted Facebook and Instagram years ago. I did it quietly. No soapbox. No dramatic exit. Just a simple severing, because I could see that the dynamics weren’t healthy for me. The dopamine, the compulsions, the subtle sense of being under a spell.
So I stopped. Turned it off.
It worked, at least for a while.
Within weeks, I felt lighter. Less fragmented. More me.
Then came LinkedIn. Same cycle. Different packaging.
I stepped away again.
Now I’m noticing those same patterns emerging in me again.
This time, with Substack.
The notifications. The hearts. The feedback loops.
The subtle but powerful tug to be seen, acknowledged, affirmed.
Rewatching the film this weekend brought all of this into greater focus.
This time, I’m trying something slightly different.
I’m not walking away, but I’ve decided to adjust significantly.
For staters, I’ve removed the Substack app from my phone to set a boundary between my time on the platform and the rest of this sacred life. I’m reclaiming how and when I show up. I’ve set times during the week when I’ll login on my computer to read, respond, and write new material.
My serial book release will continue as planned. However, I’ll be pressing pause on my poetry and essays for a short while. I need a little time to recenter, recalibrate, and reconnect with the parts of my life untethered to metrics. Since I’ve been writing about agency, it feels only right (and necessary) to reclaim my own before continuing down that path. The haikus will come at a slower pace. Fewer notes. Less noise.
More space. More presence.
Because that’s the center I’m returning to:
Discovering what I love, and giving it the attention it deserves.
I’m still here, just a bit less often, for now.
…
Kataññutā,
Glenn
A couple of things Glenn. Thanks for the context -- relevant yes to your writing as well as platforming here, which we are all connected through.
I see myself in your journey of choices in a couple of ways. While I'm not inclined to study the topic of social media per se, I have a teenage daughter. (For better or worse, I myself have been highly skeptical, and in effect disengaged from popular social media. This has mostly been grounded in my observations of humanity's overall social trajectory.)
The thing that was hardest with my daughter was the intersection of phone time and lying. She's never been so into social media, but she can watch her some youtube. And she plays games. So, the nature of her choices and the types of games and shows she was watching -- she was very reticent to let me monitor those. And of course, that only makes you more suspicious -- as it should. But it's also very normal developmentally for pre-teens especially to get a taste for lying, and the power it gives them, and to get out of whack in some way. Combine that with phones, which give kids potentially unfettered access to say yes where you would say no, and there's where a particularly sticky part of the phones-apps-games-socialmedia for kids equation becomes weighted against good parenting.
In retrospect, my proudest moment was discovering my daughter had created an account (on her computer, not phone) and was using a thing called character.ai (this was when it first came out). I confronted her with a hard "no". She was really mad, and my hunch was really right.
So I would say, now that you've given yourself and your son sufficient "pause", trust your instincts as a parent. Making a standard of willing and consistent communication will tell you much of what you need to know. And don't freak out about lying, if you are tempted. Remember it's normal developmentally and is actually a good "skill" (to know if/when others are lying) if you can hone it for good rather than evil lol.
As far as social media... i consider each platform like a bar. Definitely have to watch out for too much enjoyment of the imbibing part!
This is too real. I replaced the Instagram app with the Substack app, thinking that would be a slower, richer, more wholesome experience. But the addictive/compulsive aspects have turned out to feel more or less the same