Grappling with social media (and news) in retirement

If you spend a bit too much of your free time on social media when you have a job, just wait until retirement 🤣. A habit of scrolling Facebook or Bluesky during down time can turn into a lot more time on a go-to platform once free time expands.

As I craft my new life as a retiree, I’m attempting to right size the time and energy I pour into social media, whether for news updates or personal connections. And that means being more intentional instead of governed by habits.

I’m trying to keep few questions in mind:

• Is this something I get satisfaction from because I feel like I’m making a contribution to my community, either professionally or locally?
• Am I enjoying this because it’s interesting and/or fun?
• How do I feel after I spent time immersed in this? Energized, or mentally exhausted? Content, or overwrought?
• Do I end up feeling like too much of my day was wasted in front of a screen?

“How draining is the use of social media? A pioneering 2021 study found that just 30 minutes of phone scrolling tires us out psychologically, actually reducing our ability to exercise,” Christopher Mims writes in “Your Key Survival Skill for 2026: Critical Ignoring”{target=’_blank’} (that Wall Street Journal article is worth a read – there’s a paywall, but I got access via a free 72-hour library pass).

Professional social media

Although I’m retired, I still like being involved in areas I was writing about – especially as I continue to write freelance articles from time to time. I want to remain an active member of the R community (R is a computer programming language with a lot of welcoming and helpful users). I’m also very interested in generative AI, a field where there seems to be important news breaking every other day.

Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Mastodon are good places for me to get and share this kind of news. I find participating in tech communities interesting and energizing – in reasonable doses. And it’s nice to feel like I’m still contributing, if in a smaller way.

For example, one of my followers recently posted that my tips “have been super helpful over the last few months. I’m slowly collecting a small library of bookmarked ‘Sharon Machlis resources’ in a dedicated folder. 🙏 Appreciate you.” As much as I’m trying to wean myself off of seeking external validation, that sure made me feel great!

But I can do this without spending the first hour of every morning plus multiple other times per day checking tech sources. It’s taken me awhile, but I’m starting to cut back . . . at least some. However, I still have work to do. Too often a “let me take a quick look at this” turns into half an hour or more – especially in winter, when I’m inside a lot.

In one of my meditation classes, our workshop leader suggested that instead of grabbing our phones as a distraction, we consider a few minutes of mindful breathing. That’s a pretty great idea.

I’ve found another effective way to counter my habit of glancing at social media multiple times a day: Log out of my accounts. The extra effort of logging back in makes me less likely to start what I think will be a brief peek that ends up as a huge time sink.

Personal social media

Facebook can be a useful timesaver for keeping up with family and friends. But especially now that I have more time in retirement, I’m not sure I want shortcuts in my personal relationships anymore.

I was uneasy with maintaining personal connections via group broadcasts even before I retired. But now I have the time to think about this more seriously and explore other options. It’s certainly been nice to know more about the lives of people I care about via Facebook. But that increased quantity has often come at the expense of quality.

For example, there’s a big difference between a loved one calling to excitedly tell me that they’re getting married, and reading a post that broadcasts the news to hundreds of “friends” on Facebook. Talking to someone one-on-one is a whole different experience from leaving a comment in a lengthy thread of other comments.

Facebook is certainly efficient for sharing personal news. But is it as good?

Somehow I managed everything from graduating high school to geting married to buying our first house without needing a platform like Facebook to broadcast the news. And my life wasn’t any poorer for it. The one-on-one conversations about milestones in my life were often rich and deep. I’m glad I experienced life before social media.

Crafting a post for consumption by potentially hundreds of followers or “friends” is very different than talking with a single friend – even if it’s by email.

“[Social media] communications tend to be more performative and anxiety-inducing than one-to-one conversations,” Jonathan Haidt wrote in the Atlantic (Atlantic gift links expire after 2 weeks ).

Even a blog or group email is different than a Facebook post. I have no numerical count of how many people ‘like’ my posts. I’m not writing this so an algorithm might bubble it to the top of hundreds of people’s feeds and I can check if the “like” count rises. (Although I do check my social media posts about these columns 😊)

“Social media platforms are addictive by design: The notifications they’re built around trigger a dopamine release in our brains, just as recreational drugs and gambling do,” Kelsey Hansen wrote in the Harvard Business Review (currently paywalled, sorry), summarizing one of the points in NY Times investigative reporter Max Fisher’s book The Chaos Machine.

How does it change the experience if I get together with family or friends to share a meal, and some of us have our phones out on the table? (I’m guilty of this.) Is that any way to fully experience my own life?

I don’t think so.

Hansen recalls being on a family vacation without Internet access (pre-smartphone) when she “kept thinking, ‘I can’t wait to get home to check Facebook. I’ll have more notifications since I’ve been away.’”

Is that how I want to run my friendships? My life?

News

This is an especially challenging time to deal with news for a lot of us. I don’t want to pretend things are great and ignore what’s happening around me. On the other hand, spending multiple hours of each day getting slightly different versions of the same upsetting story isn’t helping improve my community or the world. It does often get me agitated and upset, though.

“One 2022 paper concluded that a half-hour of social-media use before training caused enough mental fatigue to affect the hand-eye coordination of elite [male] volleyball players,” Mims wrote in the article mentioned above. Which means it’s probably NOT a great way to begin my morning if I want to feel ready for a brisk walk or short run, even if I’m not an elite athlete. (That experiment used Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram if you’re wondering. The control group watched 30-minute documentaries projected onto a large screen, not on their phones.)

Some experts who’ve worked on challenging political and social issues for decades advise limiting how much time we spend ingesting the news. Yes it’s important to take some time to know what’s happening, but not necessarily huge chunks of our day. Instead, we can take some time to decide what we want to do about issues that particularly resonate with us. Few of us can fix everything, or even one major thing, alone. But we still may want to work with others to be part of a solution, or at least an improvement.

Taking action can not only help with tikkun olam – repairing the world – but also bring more meaning to our lives. And help us feel empowered instead of helpless.

And then? Make sure to also do what we can to experience joy, laughter, love, and other things that make life worth living, even in challenging times.

Life is the ultimate finite resource. As I get older, I realize in a different, more profound way just how finite it is. The worst possible choice I can make would be to waste whatever’s left.

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