Why You Should Delete Social Media Apps from your Phone Now!
Social media apps aren't your friend and are far from being "social." Certainly this is the case with the major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X and TikToc.
What started off as something which was genuine of social good has degenerated into a means of extracting your personal data and selling you stuff. Social media companies, Google and others are advertising agencies and work for the companies that pay them, not you.
In their book, "Data Grab - the new colonialism of big tech and how to fight back" Ulises Mejias and Nick Couldry say:
"If you're not paying for the product then you are the product"
All those platforms where you are offered free use, notably the big US and Chinese social media platforms TikToc, Meta, and X, plus the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo - you are what is being sold. Specifically your personal data is being sold so that they can make money out of you. Google and Meta are among the worst offenders to the extent that the way they operate can genuinely be described as data colonialism. According to Mejias and Couldry, data colonialism is about capturing human life through the medium of data. We are the targets of their imperialism. They aim to own us: it's identity theft on a global scale. If that weren't scary enough, the countries where most of these unaccountable, undemocratic, mega rich corporations are based in, are, or are becoming authoritarian states, China, the USA and the Russian Federation. Very few if any are based elsewhere.
When I first signed up with Facebook, it was a very useful way of keeping in touch with friends and rellies back in the UK. It has happily replaced most of those interminable family Christmas letters people used to feel it necessary to produce and lately it's even done away with greeting cards. I remember when we used to get a hundred or more Christmas cards and be expected to send out about the same number. All gone.
That was then, now we have reached the "enshitification" phase of social media platforms and there are some more big problems!
Have you ever had that experience that you've checked your social media feed and found that time has flown when you look up? Well there's a good likelihood that you've been manipulated by the social media companies into doing that.
The major social media platforms use various psychological tricks to do this. One of the main techniques is called "variable intermittent reward." Simply put you don't get the reward for an action every time, just often enough to keep you seeking the dopamine reward. Just like gambling. They've turned so many of us into social media junkies - desperate for the next fix. I had a conversation with someone recently who has joined the Meta Boycott (see below) who described feeling physically nauseous after a few hours of abstinence. This is real stuff. (I have the individual's permission to describe this). I felt a bit jittery myself especially for the first twenty four hours.
This is not the only trick the big social media apps use to keep you engaged and buying stuff. X, formerly Twitter have used the trick of amplified rage to send you down rabbit holes. I've found myself doing this on occasion and wasted hours arguing small points with complete strangers. They all make it hard for you to stop by designing their apps so that there is no obvious off ramp or logical way of finishing a session. It is not in the interests of the big social media companies to do this, they want to keep you engaged in a perpetual loop of doomscrolling so that you will click/tap on ads and increase their profits.
You can forget anything to do with personal privacy while you're using the social media apps (or using Google), while they vacuum up every tidbit of information they can gather about you to tailor your feed so that they can serve up content which will keep you engaged.
What can you do?
I'm not advocating going cold turkey. Social media when used properly can be truly social. I met my partner through a Facebook group. I am urging you to take control and not to let it control you. Most importantly start paying attention to what personal information you give away and protect your privacy.
First, delete your social media apps from your phone as suggested by Hugh Cuylenberg in his excellent book, "The Resilience Project". If you really can't bear to do that at least move them off your home screen so that there is a small hurdle to surmount to access them. I have Facebook, my main social app, on my iPad. It's accessible on my computer too, but I don't carry either of these around with me in my pocket all day. It makes using social media more of a decision.
This one small act of resistance has saved me so much time, or perhaps I should say has given me back so much time.
Second, switch off all the notification settings for social media. If you have an iPhone you call always include notifications in a daily summary. It really won't affect your life if you don't see someone's lunch the moment it has been regurgitated onto Instagram.
Third, consider setting a timer or using a Pomodoro app to limit the time you spend using social media. Pomodoro apps are great ways of helping you to task focus. I use Session but there are tons of others. I don't know about Android, but iPhone has a way of limiting the time you spend on specific categories, go to Settings | Screen Time | App Limits.
Forth, change to a privacy focused search engine. You don't need to go full TOR. I used to use Firefox with DuckDuckGo until Firefox changed their terms of service to allow them to harvest all my data. Now I've switched to Brave. Brave anonymises their searches to prevent "digital fingerprinting" - another technique corporations use to gather information about you. This is just a starting point, there's a lot more I could talk about on search engines.
Fifth, if you can switch to a social media platform like Mastodon - part of the fediverse, a more democratic and non-commercial social media platform. Developed in Germany, there are lots of Mastodon servers all round the world, with regional or speciality focuses. There is even an Australian version. There are no or very few ads and you control your feed, it's not determined by some entrapping algorithm. My handle there is @rpattiewilliams@mastodon.au - I've enjoyed the platform which is remarkably free of the vitriol found on other platforms. I have around a thousand "friends" on Facebook, so I won't be abandoning that platform anytime soon, but eventually ... who knows? Reflect on this with the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn't signup to Facebook today.
Sixth, pay a heck of a lot more attention to those "terms and conditions" we blithely accept without reading. Google's and Meta's both give them total licence to use anything about you they want, but there are plenty of others that are just as bad.
Seventh & Finally, join me and other abstaining from Meta for a week starting 5th May - 11th May 2025. Why specifically Meta? X is arguably worse. The goal is to send a message to the tech oligarchs by affect their advertising revenues for a week. Rather than stand up to the fascist regime in Washington, Mark Zuckerberg capitulated and went cap in hand donating a fortune to the recent inauguration ceremony. Through their program "Free Basics" Meta has been hoovering up data from the global south. They are one of the worst data colonialism offenders.
It's alarming how much privacy we have all given away. In a world which was more friendly, that was probably OK, to a point. But in this brave new world where what you post or like on social media could land you in some Salvadorian gulag it's worth taking this a lot more seriously.
Thanks to YouTuber Arun Maini aka MrWhosetheBoss in compiling this article.
Robert Pattie-Williams
@rpattiewilliams@mastodon.au
May 2025
Tags: #boycottmeta #boycottamericanproducts #privacy #datacolonialism