5-Year Digital Minimalism Update: Without Social Media, You're a Nobody | Ep 60
"Phoneless and nearly friendless, but vindicated—and that's worth something, isn't it?"
What I learned about friendship, publishing, and my own ego after 5 years off social media. A solo comeback episode on losing fake friends offline, why schools are banning phones, and how it seems like nobody gets a book deal without a platform these days:
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00:00 Where Have I Been?
Sophia Chang (00:00)
Welcome to the Sophia Chang Show.
I'm back! Welcome back to the show, where I tell you about my life—and I always have the most correct opinions about everything, until I change them. This episode is eight months overdue. Why? Because I have been so offline that in that time period, Anchor disappeared and became Riverside in the Spotify swallow-up, and I could not figure this software out for the life of me. I don't understand why everyone is like, "I love this thing more than life itself, take my firstborn," because maybe they're zoomers and they just understand terrible, cluttered interfaces more than I do. It's like when Canva used to be so clean, and now it's like this crazy mess of boxes, and I'm just like, I just want to put words on a background. I just want to press record, talk at you guys, and then stop recording. Anchor could do that. Now I had to research everything. But anyway, you know what? Let's get on with the show.
01:31 What Has Changed?
So what has changed in the year plus eight months since my last update? Back in November 2023, I was saying that I was getting more and more scared while everyone was getting more brainwashed. That has gotten even worse. But the difference is, back when I first started this whole Cal Newport acolytism and my like, "let's just try this going off social media and being a digital minimalist" thing—it was fun. I was also so smug. I was like, look at all this willpower that I have, look how much extra time I have, and I'm so much less depressed and anxious. I went off—you guys will remember this episode where I went off Instagram and a whole bunch of my suicidal thoughts went away. It was great. It was just a wonderful, awesome, fun thing. And now it is no longer fun. Now it's like I'm in The Walking Dead.
Except I'm the only one who's alive, and everyone is walking around with pieces of their face falling off, and it's not fun, because these are not cute zombies. These are not the hot Nicholas Hoult zombies from that movie. This is not dead Edward Cullen, with his frozen vampire peen. This is just zombie apocalypse. But the only saving grace that I have is that I am not the only one. I'm starting to see the beginnings of a larger cultural—and even policy-level—backlash.
03:13 Phone-free schools
Back in my last episode, I mentioned people like Freya India and the author of The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt—I have his name correct this time. And this is hopefully spreading on a larger level. I'm gonna give you some receipts now. The US Surgeon General has said that teens on social media for over three hours a day have double the risk of depression and anxiety. We're already past that—the average teenage use, they say, is three and a half hours a day. I call bullshit on that. The average teenage use per day is 26 hours a day. I stand by that. I'm sure some people do even more than that. But right now, 22 states plus the District of Columbia have enacted phone restriction laws in schools.
Thank God, this is so long overdue. It blows my mind that it took this long to be like, hmm, I don't know, but do you think that it would be better for children to be, I don't know, learning how to read rather than watching porn in school? What do you think, maybe we need to do a study in order to figure out whether that's—are you crazy? Are you crazy? I don't understand. Why is everyone insane? And I am not being hyperbolic for once. This is true. This is real. There are teachers who are like, "I caught my students watching porn in class." Eight years old. Something is rotten in the state of the states.
Even Australia—the entire country of Australia—has banned phones in schools, and to great success. South Australia implemented their phone ban starting in early 2023. They wanted full statewide implementation by term three. Now, according to the South Australian Department for Education, when they compare the first two terms of 2024, which is the full ban, versus the same period of time—the first two terms of 2023, when the phones were still being allowed—there has been a 63% decline in critical incidents involving social media.
What do I mean by critical incidents? I'm talking Lord of the Flies, okay? Your children have run feral. We're talking about cyberbullying, passing porn around to their friends, derogatory posts, behavioral issues, even physical violence—it's gone down when you compare the pre-phone-ban to the post-phone-ban numbers. And a lot of these incidents are off-site or outside of school hours, which actually makes a 63% decline even more impressive, because we are seeing fewer incidents—even for stuff that's happening outside of school—purely from a single policy within school.
Okay? There is no separation of school and the outside of school. What happens in school will trickle out. And so just by doing that, they have already reduced physical and emotional and psychological violence enacted upon their children and amongst their children. All right, you know what—the stats don't sway you, you're still gonna be on your phone, fine. There's nothing I can do.
06:33 What does this mean and why am I podcasting?
I mean, every single second of every single day, I want to shake people for various reasons, but I want to shake people for this, 'cause I just want to be like, do you not see what's happening? The irony is I need social media to shake people on a large scale. So as of right now, it's just gonna be me ranting into my brand-new pop filter. Do you like it? I don't know. I do miss the days of me being able to record on Anchor in my bathtub. I miss you guys hearing my naked body squish around.
I'm talking about kids not killing each other, and then I'm talking about me-ing in a bathtub, floating in my own filth. This is the Sophia Chang Show, everyone—children should not be on here. Have I dropped an F-bomb? Do I need to put an E on this episode? I don't know, I might have gotten through this whole thing being clean. Being so clean, like when I was in the tub.
Okay, the brutal truth of going off social media still stands: when I went off social media, I lost all my friends. But you know, when I became chronically ill, I lost my friends too. So it just—when you're not young and cute and wearing a lot of makeup, you just kind of lose a lot of your friends. You really find out who your real friends are, and you're gonna be shocked—you guys, you're gonna be shocked. When you go off social media, you're gonna find out you don't actually have any real friends.
So the sooner you get used to not having fake friends, the better for your self-esteem. I promise you, I feel so much better these days than I did those days—my Snapchat days. I'm not as cute, but I feel better. So take your pick. Take your pick.
So, on my back, because apparently in this hell world right now, you cannot get a book deal without a platform. That's just all I'm gonna say about the people who tell you that you can have a platform without social media—they are lying to you. I don't think I am proving that you can build an audience without social media. I think I'm proof that without social media, you're a nobody.
Because here I am, working so hard on my craft. I'm honing my voice, sharpening my workflow, 10Xing like a mofo, and my productivity is through the roof. When in actuality, I probably would have had better luck pitching a set of five tropes on TikTok than writing just amazing novels—like the best work of my life—and then holding it up like a little street urchin, with my eyes full of tears and my face smeared in soot, saying, "Please, sir, may I have a book deal?" No. No, you cannot.
So here I am, shilling—cha-cha-cha, shilling. Somebody asked me, "Do you still want to be on Cal Newport's podcast? Do you need that validation?" And I was like, are you kidding me? Of course I wanna be, yes, because that means I'm rich and famous. Please, please validate me through dollar dollar bills, y'all. Like, please, my God, I need—I want validation all the time. What part of being a millennial do you not understand?
But the depressing conclusion is basically, it doesn't matter that I am spitting actual statistics in your face—you're still going to be addicted. You're still going to choose social media over reality, over real friends, and that is just life. I have grown to accept it, probably because all of us geriatric millennials are entering middle age, and we are too tired to care. We are looking ahead towards our retirement funds and going, man, they are a lot slimmer than we thought they would be. Have you not started investing yet, by the way?
I'm gonna daughter you. Me and the male in my house have this son-and-daughter competition—he "sons" as many people as he can to start investment funds, and I'm just like, no, I'm not gonna let you men earn more than women, still. My sisters and I are gonna invest—and you know what, though? It's not happening. I preach and I preach and they're just like, "we don't have the money, we're women." I will get more into women slapping that cheese in future episodes.
But that aside, as much as I love that there is a larger backlash for social media, I absolutely don't think it's becoming mainstream. And I think I'm just really good at weeding out people now, so that my friends are a little bit more like me—where we use voice messages for each other. That's mostly because of my disability. And we call each other on the phone. But I do not feel that it is mainstream whatsoever. Even my recording this podcast is just one drop of water in a desert—it's a morass of social media out there.
The government can ban phones, the Surgeon General can issue warnings, but individuals will always choose distraction over reality. So I will be here, phoneless and nearly friendless, but you know—vindicated, and that's worth something, isn't it?
And that's it for the premiere episode of a brand new season of the Sophia Chang Show. I am so appreciative of you listening. Without you, I would just be talking in an empty room by myself like a weirdo. So come and be a weirdo with me. Tell your friends if anything that I've said here—in any previous episodes or in the future episodes—I've got a bunch of really awesome authors coming on the show with me. I've got a lot of good stuff planned for you. So subscribe—I think I'm gonna be on Substack now. And then if you like what you heard, give five stars on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. I'm everywhere. And I'll see you next time.
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Sophia Chang is a Reese's Book Club LitUp fellow, disabled dancer, and extroverted writer. She hosts The Sophia Chang Show podcast where she shares No B.S. publishing stories and advice she wishes she'd known. Subscribe if you don't want to cry alone.
