Just today, I tried to install Google Meet. I had an interview for something, and the dialog boxes that were popping up, notifications, contacts. Then it asked for access to my fitness activity. I was like, what does Google Meet need my fitness activity for? Like ridiculous the things they're trying to grab.
SPEAKER_00Now, of course, Casey was someone who had been on my radar for years, going back to when she was writing for The Outline, but I admittedly hadn't read so much of her work on fitness. And as I was digging into these pieces about smartphones and social media, I was fascinated not just by what she was writing about, you know, those issues that are very important to listeners of this show, but also how she was bringing that together with her focus on fitness and health and the kinds of issues she's writing about primarily these days. And so I thought that this would make a really fascinating conversation because I'm also at a moment where I'm trying to rethink the types of digital services and platforms that I'm using and depending on to try to get off ones that are based in the United States specifically, but you know, also just thinking more broadly, you know, as I have been approaching this, realizing that maybe I don't need all of these things that I thought I needed before. But then on top of that, because Casey has a new book out, I thought it was an interesting opportunity to bring in some of her broader work and to understand how that shapes her thinking on these digital technologies today. So I think what came out of that was a really interesting conversation that I think you are going to really enjoy as well. And if you do, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice or share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you want to support the work that goes into making Tech Won's Save Us every single week, so we can keep having these critical, in-depth conversations about important issues related to technology and the world around us, you can join supporters like Roland from Bern, Switzerland, Catherine in Los Angeles, Emil, Alexandrine in Oxford, Alexi from Germany, Mina from Los Angeles, Ray in London, Tom in Paris, and Pedro from Vienna by going to patreon.com slash TechWon't Save Us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Casey, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I'm really excited to have you on the show. I remember your writing from back in the outline days and, you know, have like been aware of your transition toward fitness writing, but it was less of something that I was reading. So I hadn't seen so much of it until you kind of really came back on my radar recently with some of the writing that you've been doing around social media and smartphones and dumb phones, I guess. So I I want to dig into all this with you, but first I wanted to ask you about that transition that you did from tech writing into fitness writing. What was that like? And and why did you end up making that kind of bigger switch?
SPEAKER_01It's a good question. I mean, I originally came out of college. My my major was science. I was an applied physics major. I went to engineering school. So I started out writing about more so science stuff, although I also did some blogging back in the day, if anyone remembers the unofficial Apple weblog.
SPEAKER_00I do. That was a Jason Calicanus publication as well, right? If you have any stories about him, I'm happy to hear that as well.
SPEAKER_01Oh my God. Not any I can tell on this podcast.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01So I've transitioned from science writing actually into covering gadgets when all of these companies started releasing tablets and smartphones, Android stuff, although lots of non-Android, like the Facebook phone, et cetera.
SPEAKER_00Back in the Windows Phone days as well.
SPEAKER_01Oh, Windows Phone, huge, huge, huge. I remember HTC phones, Palm, Palm OS. So they needed somebody to review all those phones. So I stepped into that role. I did that for several years. And at that time, I started working at Wirecutter when I switched away from that. And that was that had like a sort of tech slash health bent. And by that time I was starting to get into lifting. Another couple of years went by. I started writing my column about lifting weights, Ask a Swole Woman. Then I kind of kept getting these jobs where there was it was sort of about the overlap of tech and health, or like I sort of brought both of those things to the table. Like when I was working at Outline that my technical job was future editor, which the nice thing about it was that it was sort of open to interpretation by the editor, what future really means. So I ended up covering a lot of health type stuff, especially women's health, things about IVF and IUDs and those kinds of things. And I remember somebody making a comment about the outline where they were like, it's surprisingly strong on women's health issues, of all things. And I was like, thank you. That led me a little further down the health path. And it was like the longer I did this column, the bigger of part of my like professional world it came until I was just sort of taking the feedback that I was getting from the world, which was that that was like a thing that people really liked and felt they needed and responded to. So that just sort of grew the longer that I did it. And I think that people appreciated honestly that, you know, in a world when things move so fast and you get people who emerge on the scene and they get really popular really quickly, and then they take on all the sponsorships, and then there's sort of they sort of like crash out in terms of trustworthiness, that I'm just sort of there, like plugging along in my steady way. And eventually, before you know it, you've been doing it for almost 10 years. And everyone's like, hey, I guess we can trust this person because she's been in it for a long time, but without like betraying the expectations that we might have had. And so I really value that as well. That I've sort of like gained trust over this long time. And I don't take that lightly, I guess I would say.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I and I feel like that trust is so important these days as well, right? Because there's so many people trying to sell you something that, you know, if you find somebody who you can really trust, who you feel are not just, you know, kind of trying to sell you some fitness product or some supplement because they're making money on the other side of it, then they're going to stick with you because they appreciate the advice that you're getting. Before we talk a bit more about fitness and the types of things you've been doing now, of course, one of the things that I remember you from is kind of leading the charge against Apple's butterfly keyboard that was on the Macs back in the day. You know, Apple launched it at the as this new keyboard that was going to be so much better. But, you know, a lot of people ended up having a lot of issues with it. And it was your piece that, you know, I think really like encapsulated this for a lot of people. Can you talk about what that was like? And I'm sure Apple was uh kind of pissed off at you, I would imagine.
SPEAKER_01It's funny that this comes up because it's like I've never been busier in my life than in this last week. And then in the last week, also all of these sort of large and small disasters are happening. And one of them was that I opened my laptop in the airport a couple of days ago and the L key was like doing the thing where I was pushing it and nothing's coming out. So the similar issue to the butterfly keyboards. But anyway, yeah, it was really crazy. I mean, the thing that it's hard to remember stuff like that, it's hard to develop a sense of what the context was in which that piece came out, which is like the really important part of it because people were having problems with these keyboards. Apple knew it because they had a whole, as I describe in the piece, a whole lengthy protocol for what to do with somebody when they came in with one of these keyboards. They had like a bunch of tests set up. They would not replace the computer until you had been in three times or something like that for the same issue. So they were aware of it and people were aware of it, but there was a lot of equivocating about it in the media where no one was saying, like, this is a bad product. They were trying to like work around it with, well, Apple says focusing on what Apple's messaging about it was versus just sort of, I mean, it's it's interesting because this is what I get into in my book that just came out, where it's like this idea of like believing yourself in your experience versus what other people are receiving the instructional messaging from the world on what you're supposed to be doing. It's very difficult to say, like, no, I think this is a bad product when there's so man, not only Apple is saying no, it isn't, and there's all of these sort of tech journalists who are saying, no, it isn't. And I was like, I have to sort of believe my own reality here. So I wrote that piece and I think it was controversial at the time. I was able to get some information on the back end from like one institutional customer of Apple, let's say, on the repair rate of these computers at one point. So that sort of spoke to like how endemic the problem was. I mean, actually, I know that Apple PR is legendary for being very communicative on the back end. They used to have one extremely scary, like, head of PR who would be up in people's faces a lot. She hasn't worked there in a long time. And I think whoever replaced her is not like that anymore. I never heard from Apple directly. I did obviously reach out to their PR address and say, like, hey, anything to anything to say about this issue? No response. I've not communicated with Apple PR much. I was not the Apple person at any of my tech jobs. They sort of have point people usually who who do the Apple coverage and they will have a greater correspondence with Apple. But Apple is not given me the time of day, which is fine. You know, I'm I'm okay with that.
SPEAKER_00Totally. You don't need it, right? And and this is why people trust you, because you're willing to call it out when so many other people were like equivocating around it and just willing to say what so many people were experiencing. Just as a final question about this this period, how did you find working in tech journalism? And, you know, do you have any reflections on what that industry is like today?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's been through a lot. I mean, all journalism has. I think I was lucky to be in this time when it was sort of shifting away from a th a more enthusiast press to being more skeptical and more sort of antagonistic, or at least skeptical, maybe is a better word. And now these companies have never had more powerful, like they were not a tenth as powerful when I started writing about them as they are now. And it's kind of scary how quickly the amount of wealth has metastasized in this industry. There's not remotely enough resources now, I feel like, for to cover them to the degree that they need to be. And in a lot of cases, it's like again, the products are realistically quite bad, quite predatory of people. They have a very deliberate product roadmap of how these things will transform. They pretend they don't understand how algorithms work or whatever, but they know. Like the story that just came out about Google is effectively aware of how bad its search product is now, but it enhances the appeal. Like the fact that search results are so bad enhances the appeal of the sponsored results. So they're like, we're fine with it. I don't I don't think, you know, don't quote me. They're not literally saying this, but the idea is that they are not incentivized to improve the free results because it complements their bottom line for the paid results to appear better than ever. And that's just one very tiny example.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's such a damning statement on like the state of not just Google, but like the wider tech industry. And like you're saying, you know, we're in this moment where these companies are more powerful than ever. But we've seen, even since you were in tech journalism, the like resources that are available to journalism institutionally continue to decline, like, right? The number of publications we see kind of given over to private equity or gutted, or the number of journalists getting laid off just gets worse and worse with every passing year.
SPEAKER_01But the nice thing is that there's been this groundswell of independent publications, where I mean, it proves out this idea that there is like a market for content about these things. People do really want to know what's going on, to the point that many of them will pay for it. And it's unfortunate that so many outlets were overtaken by either literally taken over by private equity or this sort of lining the pockets of a CEO of media company versus investing in the people who actually make the content. So there's been a sea change kind of that is refreshing.
SPEAKER_00No, definitely. You know, at least it's one upside to this picture that we're seeing. But you were talking about the products from these companies, right? And so I wanted to pivot into that because I feel like if you look at social media today, I feel like at least that fitness content would be like one of those kind of key staples of it, right? You know, you have it's aspirational, you know. Look, if you put in the time, the effort, you can look something like this. You'll usually have pretty good looking people who are sharing that kind of content, right? So it's going to be somewhat appealing to people who are browsing these platforms. When you started to make this more kind of concerted move into writing about fitness, launching the newsletter, things like that, what was it like to move into that space and to contend with the way that fitness was being positioned on these platforms and in this kind of increasingly mainstream way of thinking about exercise and things like that?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's interesting that you bring that up because I do talk, I'm just gonna say my book's name for my own benefit. But A Physical Education is my book that came out last week. And one of the things that I do talk about is what it was like to be on Instagram in, you know, I mean, I got on Instagram 2010, like ground floor. And then 2014 was when I was starting to get into lifting weights. And I felt that there was it was a sort of beautiful place to be at that time, and especially now in retrospect, because it had not yet been ground into this fine powder of like hyper optimized content formats and personalities and like subject matter. It was just a bunch of people who were enjoying lifting. They were really into eating and their gym friends and their PRs and their programming and eager to share it in a way that was very consumable. And it wasn't sort of niched down into this like formats of like what I eat in a day or all these things. It was just, it was much more authentic, I guess, to use a slippery word.
SPEAKER_00If I think about that time, I probably think about, you know, Instagram being more like, oh, you're following your friends, or maybe you've found people who are in some like specific kind of groups or interests that you are into, but the platform itself is not pushing things into your feed in the way that it does today. It's not so algorithmically focused, and it's also not so video focused, right? Is was that the main difference there?
SPEAKER_01Very much so. It feels like impossible to conceive of now, but video had only just come out a year before, maybe on the platform, and people didn't really use it that much. It was like, how do we use this? Everything was so image focused, and there was like a big focus on photography. It was like, are these just sort of like moving photography pictures kind of? And there were no stories, there was no algorithm. It was so different. And I was reflecting recently actually on the how when the algorithm started to roll out, so many people were like, we don't want this. This is going to make things worse. And the tech companies were like, actually, our data shows that you do want it. And just like give it a chance, it's gonna be great. Now here we are, how many years later? It was not good. It made everything worse. No one likes it. Like it's, or at least like in my estimation, I'm I know there are people who are like that. The algorithm like knows me better than I know myself, but I I don't think that's actually true. And there's a at least a significant plurality of people who miss just being able to see what their friends post.
SPEAKER_00It feels more like we kind of adjust to it, right? Because this is what we have, and we have very little power to actually change it. So it's like, okay, I just need to try to make whatever this platform is now work for what I'm trying to get out of it, recognizing that that's probably not what is actually there. What are people actually getting when they go to these platforms today if they're searching for, you know, say fitness content compared to what they would have been getting back then? How is that different?
SPEAKER_01There wasn't even really a good search back in, you know, 10 plus years ago.
SPEAKER_00I think it was like you could search for people, but that was like pretty much it, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you could like search for their names and you would learn sort of like external to Instagram, or you would like follow somebody, find somebody you liked, look at their follows, like follow them, which is still like pretty decent proxy for good stuff, but it doesn't bear out then in your feed, which is the part the annoying part. Now I think there's so much more structure around the content, the algorithms are friendly to, and it's usually a pretty rigid set, like it's hard to imagine, as you're saying, we can't see or know about or experience what we can't see or know about or experience. So it's hard to say when Instagram has gone in this direction over the course of years, what it either used to be like or how it could be meaningfully different. And you're like, this isn't so bad. Like I'm entertained, like, what's the big deal? But I found that when I stepped back from it, that when I have dipped back in after several months of maybe not looking at it, it's like, oh, the content formats and those sort of personality quirks, even are so sort of rigid and jarring to experience. Like they make sense within the platform because everyone sort of is the same way and they're replicating the same mannerisms or the story beats of a of a reel or a TikTok or whatever. But when you spend some time away from it and come back to it, it feels very uncanny valley to see people sort of conforming so hard to this type of post, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I I think it's really weird to watch, right? Or maybe I'm sure that's many people though, but we get used to it as well, right? Because we keep seeing this sort of thing. So it feels like that's the way it has to be presented. And then you see so many other people who like see other people posting that in that way and feel like they need to kind of replicate it as well because that is how it is done, right?
SPEAKER_01Right. But I think you do get habituated to it watching it. And then if you take a break from watching it and come back to it, you're like, this is yikes to see like another human acting this way in a non-human way, really, specifically in order to like appeal to a computer, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. As you were growing the newsletter, did you feel that you needed to try to conform to that as well and like try to make that kind of fitness content in order to drive people to it? Were you engaged in that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I think I had a sort of tenuous relationship with social media for a while where I think I had a decent sense of what would be required for success. And I felt insecure at best about the idea of not doing that because I have been on social media for most of my formative career years. I've gotten a lot out of it, built a lot of relationships on it. It felt like it would be a bad idea to eschew it in any way. But that said, I don't feel like I really took to it that well. I mean, I sort of got shanghai' into making video the first pivot to video time around, where my editors were like, oh, just like, can you just like make these videos really quick? And before I knew it, they were sending me like a DSLR and tripods and lights and like seamless backdrops and like all these things that I then had to like learn how to use, set up in my own apartment, like configure everything, film everything, edit everything all myself. And I was like 24 years old and didn't really have a sense of like this is way too much work to expect somebody who doesn't know anything to do. Like I say, I would say now they lucked out so hard that they had that they found somebody who would just sort of do all of that and like figure it out and not ask any questions. Made my skin crawl to think of like, okay, now that we have this the rise of the social media where now the ask is making videos instead of taking photos. And the difficulty level of making a good video versus a photo is at least 10, like 10x. It's so crazy. So that sort of put me off a little bit too. So I wanted to like make it work for me in my own way, but I never never got determined enough to really try and manufacture success on a social media platform. And I think by that time, by the time I was rolling out this newsletter, I was lucky because I had the benefit of an audience who had gelled together over the last 10 or so years. So I think if you're starting anew, I don't know how much advice I would have for anybody on how exactly to make that happen. But I was benefiting from having built up slowly over a long period of time. Like I would still think, say, that's a better way to do it versus trying to like go viral. But how one does that now would be a bit of a mystery to me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I feel like whenever I get people asked for advice with like, oh, how I got started in writing or whatnot, I'm like, the moment I got it started in this was so different than the moment we're in now. I don't even know if anything I can say really applies. Right. I did want to to ask you a bit more about that shift, but there was something else that really stood out to me in some of the articles of yours that I was reading that I think is kind of related to this topic. You were talking about how when you see this type of content about fitness on social media, it's often focused on the aesthetic of the body, right? And that the body is presented as something that needs to look really good and is not like even thinking that the body could have a different function, right? That you were talking about as you really got into lifting and started to understand your body a bit better. Can you talk about the way that that is presented and how that kind of warps people's thinking about what their body is, what it's for, and what it was like to start to challenge that and to think about it in a different way?
SPEAKER_01The scope of that question is so large. I mean, I think that my experience of focusing on the aesthetics of my body really came about when I started to get into running and dieting, and I felt I had to lose weight. And I felt all of that stuff is perceived as like a as being shallow to like quote unquote care, place so much value on what you look like. And I never really connected with that because I was like, I don't feel like I'm living for compliments from other people. There's something else going on where it's not like I'm I want their compliments and I'm like enjoying being hot. It's like it feels so much more like an obligation and sure, but it's like, why do I even care? And what I realized after thinking about it for a long time was that I felt this obligation to maximize how much I would be accepted by other people based on how I looked. I felt that I think that this is especially true of women, that I would not be taken as seriously if I did not make myself, you know, not the hottest ever. There's definitely like a road that I felt like I had, or a middle path that I had to walk, but that I would not be as taken as seriously as I would like on the things that I truly cared about, which were like my thoughts, my writing, if I did not make okay as possible for someone to get past how I looked. That led me down a path of being very focused on what does everyone else think of me? Like that's a very externally focused way of conceiving of yourself. And content that focuses on appearance is not always digging into that aspect of it. They're just sort of like, well, you want to be hot because it's fun to be hot, and being hot is good because it makes other people like you. But it's like, if we unpack that a little, it comes down to a difficult way of existing in the world where your sense of yourself is so precarious, so balanced on what other people think of you, and this very fleeting, transient thing of what you look like, which is very often not within your control or like feels very in control when you're young and nothing's happened to you yet. But that doesn't continue to be the case. So it's like, where are you going to place your sense of self when control over your appearance is no longer as accessible to you as it once was? So that's a long way of saying that when I started to unpack that for myself, I found that I was not a not enjoying that process, that it was, and that it was not paying off in the way that I thought it would. It was not as easy as people sort of as I felt it was presented as. So when I started lifting weights, because I thought, oh, maybe this will be the way that I could sort of like maximize my hotness and it will be easier. And then I learned that it was possible to feel a different way entirely in my body and have a different relationship with myself. That was not based on what does everyone think of me, but like, how does it feel to be in my body and feel physically capable and be like even attuned to like my own feelings, physical and emotional. When I realized that that was possible, that became so much more important and satisfying in all of these things to me than focusing on managing what I looked like.
SPEAKER_00Ah, definitely. And thanks so much for outlining that. It was one of the things that really stood out to me, like as I was reading through some of the things that you that you had written about this. And I wondered as well, like this kind of effort to get us really paying attention to our appearance and how we appear in the world and creating these expectations is not something that is new, right? We have had marketing that has been pushing these ideas for a very long time. But do you think it takes a distinct form in like the era of social media when so much of this is like in your face to a degree that maybe we didn't even have when it was just advertising everywhere?
SPEAKER_01I think about this so much. I think it's like a tragedy, honestly, how surveilled we all feel now when everyone has cameras, like every business has security cameras, like and not just about like our appearance, but like our emotions, our thoughts, our like insecurities. I mean, there was just that story about Facebook tracking when women deleted selfies from Facebook, was it? That then they would market them a certain set of products based on that action.
SPEAKER_00That was such a wild story.
SPEAKER_01So I mean, I like I'm angry for people who are even just slightly younger than myself, where it's like, I feel like I at least got most of my growing up done before there were, you know, I was 20 when the iPhone came out. So I was like fully not a child anymore. I can't imagine what it's like now to be born into a world where it's like your parents' attention is going so much toward phones. There were, I think that people are pulling back on this a little now, but like there were a few years where parents realized that iPads were so magical to even little, little, little, little bit babies. And they were just like, oh great, this is so easy. Like you just hand them an iPad, and now the those kids are like growing up and gaining their own voice on social media, and they're like, I'm so messed up for having been babysat by this device for so much of my my littlest years, and they're all it's just so awful. I mean, it feels like people don't like when you frame these kinds of things as like a tragedy or a thing in which we're powerless. Like we love narratives where we can sort of like regain our that we're always like in control. So it's maybe not a popular way to frame it just because it makes us feel so out of control to be so at the mercy of this world that we live in. But at the same time, there's no other way to hold these companies accountable without acknowledging that, which is that like so much has changed and it's really, I think, affecting our mental health and relationships with each other and relationships with the world in the in a way that we're gonna we're gonna reckon with eventually that it's hard to feel the difference as it's sort of still happening or even still ramping up and we haven't really effectively started to push back on it. And I hope that we do, but I think it's gonna, we're gonna look back and be like, that was that was a crazy time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was a wild moment that we went through. But I I think that's an important thing to point out, right? Because through most of the rest of this conversation, we're gonna be talking about personal actions that you've taken and that more and more people seem to be taking to try to opt out of these platforms or some of these devices as much as possible. But there's still that recognition that there's the structural forces that are available to us limit our degree to make these choices to in a certain sense. And that, yeah, we can try to do things on our own, but challenging the power of these companies is essential if we're to ever kind of change these expectations that they're creating for us. Let's pivot then to talk about some of that, right? Because you were talking about the devices there and the use of these platforms. And you were talking about how you had been using social media since the early days of it and already had some misgivings. But what kind of brought you to the point of being like, okay, I really need to start reducing the amount that I'm using these platforms because it's having a negative effect on me and it needs to change?
SPEAKER_01There wasn't like one really big moment, but I was getting to a point like toward the end of 2023 where I was like, I just feel so uncomfortable any time that I'm not doing something. Like I have no ability to just sit there. And maybe more importantly, the sort of products that were available that were supposed to fill my time were like deeply unsatisfying. Like I have lived a whole life where I remember before and now I know after, where it's like the point that we got to where you could just like get in bed with your computer and put on a show on like Netflix and watch as many episodes as you could was like not something I could do when I was a kid. So I I've lived that transition of like being like this is amazing. But now I felt not only an obligation to always be filling my time with something that I could not just sort of exist without being busy in some way. And the fact that what I felt were my available options to busy myself with were like not like I wasn't having fun anymore being on Instagram or like finding the streaming show. Like my husband and I were literally sitting on the couch scrolling. Like we would we would scroll for the length of a show, 30 minutes, 45 minutes through all of the apps, looking for something to watch, not finding anything, which is such a stupid problem.
SPEAKER_00I think we have all had that experience. Like I find as well, it's even like sometimes the small things like pulling my phone out of my pocket to look at it, and it's like, what am I even looking for? Why am I checking? Like it doesn't matter, you know?
SPEAKER_01Right. There's there's something that's not working here. And it feels especially bad that like I'm feeling compelled to spend my time this way when it's just not good.
SPEAKER_00You realize that you wanted to change the way that you were, you know, using social media, that you were using these platforms. How did you begin to do that? And did you have any fear that there would be something that you were missing if you took that step? Because social media is promoted as you're connected with all these people. You get to learn about everything that is going on. Was there any fear or hesitation as you started to pull back from those things that, like, oh, there's going to be a loss here as well? And I don't know how I'm gonna deal with that.
SPEAKER_01For sure. I mean, I had been on social media my entire career. Definitely a cornerstone of my even my newsletter, my sort of new venture that I was fully responsible for, was taking the temperature on social media. What are people doing? What are the trends? What are they talking about? Are they talking about being is it body positivity or is it skinniness or is it Pilates or is it this? And I was gonna have to relinquish that entire touch point. That made me anxious. But I also realized that in the content that I was consuming, I didn't care to consume content about that stuff that much. I was sort of like, this all moves so quickly. It doesn't matter. It's not that it doesn't matter, but it's like these are all sort of flashes in the pan or tempest in a teapot, where it's like everyone's on to the next thing the next day. And when I look back on the writing of these things, unless I'm able to situate them in a larger context, it doesn't even feel like relevant writing anymore. It's like, okay, I did sort that out, but like no one's talking about this, and or they're talking about the same thing in a different form all over again, like a year later. At that level, it's important to talk about like what sort of things keep coming up again, but the sort of like daily dramas of social media, which is what things seem to revolve around, are both not that interesting to talk about. I don't really want to read about them, but also not that helpful to people. And I wanted to be helpful. So I was willing to at least experiment with what if I just let this go? What if I stop covering these things in this incremental way that is invested in? What if I take out the social media investment? But it was scary. So what did I do? I I kind of developed it into a process where I had paid attention to all of these like experimental pieces of people being like, I switched to a dumb phone for a week. Like people have been doing that for periodically for quite some time. I think there's like old Gizmodo pieces about it where it was like someone, I think someone did it in like 2012 or 14, where like, oh, this is funny. And now people are like, My life depends on using switching away from my smartphone.
SPEAKER_00I love that. Only a few years after the iPhone comes out, and people are already like, I need to go back to flip phone or something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there are like, it's so crazy. We used to T9 text and wasn't this wild, and you could barely take a picture, and now it's like very different relationship to that era. So I had paid attention to those pieces, and I was like, seems like everyone's two big sticking points are now we're pretty reliant on, you know, having a map of some kind in your pocket, being able to get directions and not being able to participate in like group texts, iMessages, having your messages sync between your computer and your phone, whatever. So I was like, it's not, it's not going to be the best option for me, especially living, you know, I live in LA, I live in a big city. So like the mapping thing is especially important. I won't be able to go all the way down to a dumb phone because of those two things. But what if I reduced my existing phone to these sort of essential functions that have nothing to do with like the trappings of internet and or mobile culture, social media culture that are annoying and I don't want to be responsible for anymore. And I just make my smartphone more into this like very functional, distilled down to its specific contributions to my life versus a bunch of things that I feel like I have to monitor. So I backed up my phone, made accounts for all of the apps that had local data sort of so that they would go to the cloud, wiped my phone, deleted everything that I could that was still like there's a bunch of default apps and stuff that you don't need, turned off notifications for everything and only installed what I thought I needed. And if I wasn't sure that I need it, I didn't install it right away. And I had to do this because I had like one bajillion apps on my phone. I had installed so many, I had effectively never deleted any. I was always like, I should just go through and delete everything. It takes way too long. And I was getting like too caught up in like, oh, what if I need this someday? It's like, you don't. It's like getting rid of clothes. It's like there's so many things that like you won't miss if you just get rid of them. But if you sit there and hold it in your hands, you're gonna like bulk. So that was it. And that was, you know, that was my new dumb phone.
SPEAKER_00You must occasionally run into the moments where like there's some company and it's like, oh, to access whatever you need to download our app, that must be like particularly annoying after taking all this stuff off of your off of your phone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Most of those apps are the only ones that I feel really feel bad and angry about are like ticketing apps for like concert stuff, like AXS. It's like those apps I've my understanding is are so invasive, trying to collect a lot of data. I try to prevent them from collecting as much data as I can. Just today, I tried to install Google Meet. I had an interview for something, and my phone asked to install it. And then they were just like the dialogue boxes that were popping up, notifications, contacts. And then it asked for access to my fitness activity. I was like, what does Google Meet need my fitness activity for? Like ridiculous the things they're trying to grab. So, like the whole point of the dumb phone, one of the big points is to steer myself back to a computer where you have like a little bit more of control. Like apps are very difficult to hem in. They really want to like be on top of you in this way. So steering myself back to my phone and like keeping it as a really essential functions only kind of device. So, like, but I do end up, you know, like I just took a bunch of flights. So I had to install every airline app that there is. So, but it's it's like nice because I don't run into that hard wall of when you have a dumb phone, you just like can't do that. And your only options are like, I don't even know, printing out directions from like Google Maps or whatever before you leave. Like it's a little gentler in that way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you don't need to go out and buy a whole new phone in order to make it work and then be like, oh, in the moments where I need to access that, do I need to switch my SIM card back and forth? Or oh, now I have an eSIM, you know, how do I handle switching that back and forth? Is that a process? It makes a lot of sense, right? The I'm sure the initial move of, okay, I'm wiping this thing. This is this is real. There must have been like an adjustment period on that.
SPEAKER_01There was, but it wasn't as bad as like people are worried as I was worried about. Like there were definitely a few days where I was like pulling my phone out of my pocket just because I was feeling a little uncomfortable in the moment of like, oh, I have to like wait for something and pulling it out and wanting to like scroll something and finding nothing to scroll. And I would just put my phone back and then I would just have to like sit there with whatever feeling was making me mildly uncomfortable. But that was like what I wanted was to sort of be more in the world and less offloading my every discomfort to my phone. But that ended pretty quickly that I became more comfortable with just sitting there. And it's funny that I've thought a lot about like there's a sort of like interruptibility that you have when you're on your phone versus like, let's say if you're reading a book, like I have a fundamental discomfort with reading a book because it seems so much less like approachable or penetrable. Like if I'm on my phone, I'm very interruptible. But if I'm reading a book, someone might be like, oh, she's busy. But that's kind of like also what you want. I don't know. And similar with just sitting there, it's like if you go in an airport, everyone's on their phone. Someone who's just sitting there is like, it's almost like, what's wrong with them? It's just like a pod person. And I didn't like that. I was like, it shouldn't be weird for somebody to just sit there and not scroll on their phone.
SPEAKER_00I even find there are moments where like I'll be like scrolling through my phone, I'll get lost in it, you know, something that you've written about. And I'm sure that many people have experienced where all of a sudden 10 minutes, 15 minutes are gone. And it's like, I don't know, I feel like I could have used that moment for something more productive or or just to be like reading a book, right? It doesn't even need to be a productive thing, just something more enjoyable than scrolling because I, you know, I got stuck in this kind of algorithmic feed and loop in my phone and you know, was watching too many things or reading too many things that don't really matter at the end of the day. I'm in a process now where, you know, because of everything happening in the United States, I'm in Canada, of course, I'm looking at like alternatives to a lot of US tech products delivered by these major companies. And I'm like, okay, what alternatives are out there? You know, what can I think of doing? But in the process of doing that, I've also been like, do I really need this thing that I thought I needed in the first place? You know, can I rethink some of the ways that I'm using, you know, this technology? And that's part of the reason why some of your articles kind of hit right at a moment when I was thinking through those things and was like, this is a really good idea. Can I can I work up the courage to take a big step, like Casey Token actually like do this?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was a big step. I mean, erasing your whole phone is a big step, but it was just like, it's kind of like when I got into doing, I mean, I should maybe do my own article of tying these things together, but like I had a moment going from like, I'm doing cardio, I'm dieting, all of these things, and like it's not working. And I'm afraid to give them up because it's all I know. And it's it's like while it's feels like it's not working, it's the devil you know, and that your phone is the devil you know. And if you go and change it, change your relationship to it, change is always scary. And that's like a big change to you have this way that you're existing. It doesn't feel that bad. Like it's so easy to get caught up in the inertia of things. I found that taking the plunge, it's a it's just like a human thing, even that like not anything is the right or wrong choice, but sort of taking decisive action is so much more gratifying than we always think that it will be. And like, just like sort of in a psychological statistical sense, people rarely regret their decisive actions, you know, because it feels at minimum, we enjoy feeling like we have agency in life. However, we're sort of seizing that. So it's like, while it's scary, making a decision and then following through with it all it doesn't almost doesn't matter what it is. It's like that will be gratifying to you as a human being. And this is one such thing that you can do.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna throw in a kind of selfish one as well. You know, as someone who also creates podcasts, writing, shares those things, needs to find an audience in order to support them. When you made the decision to really kind of reduce your social media presence, was there a concern to be like, oh, are the people gonna be able to find what I'm doing? Am I gonna be able to keep making this viable? Or had you kind of reached a place where you're like, no, this is fine. It'll work. It's not a problem.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're so reliant on social media for like it just sucks up all of the marketing energy, right? But the way that I've started to think about it is like there are still ways to market things and like make connections with people that are not social media. In fact, I think social media has never been sort of like given us worse bang for the buck in terms of like impact. Like your time would be better spent. Doing almost anything else. It's like flyering your neighborhood, like going out and contacting a bunch of bars and being like, hey, I want to do a live version of my podcast. Like, would you host me, or if I can like bring 10 friends or whatever? And it takes like some creativity and thinking, whereas like throwing a hundred bucks into Instagram's like ad algorithm takes no effort at all, but it also does nothing. It's like that's wasting $100 at this point. I was into the idea of trying to think outside of that box. Like I'm so much more, you know, I've tried some of the online marketing media type things, social media things, and like they don't work. They're not satisfying. Whereas I did just as an experiment, held a bunch of in-person classes about sort of super lifting weights basics. And I only marketed it to my newsletter audience. But they sold out, you know, it doesn't take that much to sell out a class. And I think that it was fun for me. You know, it makes an impact to people. We've like really moved away from all of this. Anything that can't sort of like be datified into success or failure, like sort of can't doesn't translate to metrics. And I think that's been extremely destructive. And it's not real. It's like just because something you can show like a sort of percent increase in like subscribers to a newsletter doesn't mean that anything that doesn't directly translate to that doesn't have an impact. And I think more to the point, it's almost the opposite. Like, I think people really cherish these intangibles and like things that resist datification. But because we can't datify them, we can't wrap our heads around them in the same way. I think we have to sort of return to ourselves as people in a way. Because it's like when I think about these things, I don't give a shit about an Instagram ad. But like if somebody's doing something in person or reaches out to me personally, I'm like, that matters.
SPEAKER_00On that point, which I I think is a great one, right? And I already had it written in my notes here from reading what you had written about some of this stuff. You know, when you recommend doing more things in person, you know, joining a gym, getting to know people that way, joining these groups, and then kind of developing that larger community, that does feel like an important salve to the issues that we're dealing with today. But I also wonder if you think that the past couple of decades of using these platforms, of getting used to communicating with people and connecting with people in this way has actually made it difficult in in some ways for people to get used to and and to kind of remember that those in-person options are available and to kind of like make the leap to do that.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, we've definitely gotten to a point of we always for a long time felt like this version of in-person stuff is so hard. There's so much friction, there's so much we don't know, so much risk, whereas we can spend $100 on Instagram and we know exactly what we're getting, we know exactly how many impressions, and we know exactly how many click-throughs, and like it feels all certain and like safe.
SPEAKER_00I wonder, even just for like people who are not creating content, just like regular people who you know are using social media a lot and this notion of kind of doing something in person, of joining a group, trying to get involved in a community that that is not based on these platforms. Do you think it's kind of daunting to think about doing that to a certain degree because of what we've gotten used to with this kind of uh digitally mediated communication?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, of course. It's definitely feels more difficult, but like the things that make it difficult are actually will be rewarding. You have to kind of trust that they're still valid in a lot of circumstances, even more valid, that maybe the quote unquote results of them will be less straightforward or more of a roundabout process. But all of the friction that is built into them is all stuff that is gratifying to us as people. Like if you're suffering for sort of just hanging out with people, having conversations, like you can translate a lot of what the energy that we've started to put into tech, you can move it back to this real world space that we've moved it out of because it has quote unquote too much friction. But a lot of that friction we actually like and as part of what makes like life what it is, you know. That is not something that I think we should be afraid of or apprehensive about. It's like appreciate that there's a artist quote about friction and the tools. It's like a tool can be too seamless. And I think we've gotten to that point with tech where it's like all of the edges are sanded off. And we actually like a lot of things about the friction that we're trying to avoid if we were to bring it back in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, I love that, right? I I kind of feel that these social platforms have shifted the way that we interact with the world in many really harmful ways. And I think part of addressing that is making it, you know, more normal for people to be able to do these types of things again and almost serving as a reminder that there are so many different things you can do in your community to get out and interact with people and not just be behind screens all the time. We almost need to like promote that more. But to start to close off our conversation, you took these dives of using less social media. I know you're not off of it completely, and you know, making your smartphone much dumber. So you haven't totally gotten rid of the smartphone, you can still use the things that you need. What are the differences that you found in doing all of this, you know, in terms of the time you saved, mentally, what it has meant? You know, how how do you reflect on the results of this kind of experiment that you've that you've done?
SPEAKER_01I think mentally it's been so incredible because I feel like, again, in terms of the content I consume, while I love like a good topical joke tweet, I've enjoyed many of them. I've attempted to write many of them myself. There's a lot of that in the world. And if you're trying to sort of skate to where the puck is going versus where the puck is, there's not a lot of people who are thinking outside of that very rigid box of like what succeeds online. Like we do actually, we need people who can pull their heads out of the sand and look around and like have a wider ranging, more comprehensive perspective on where are we, where have we been, where are things going. And I've really found that it's changed my the pace of my own the way I think about things in a really positive way. Like I can I feel like I can be so much more self-directed. I'm not, I'm not at this mercy of like these really tightly constructed formats. I can sort of, I can come up with my own ideas, basically. Like I don't need social media to give me either topics or formats to talk about things. And I enjoy when people come up with new things, I and I enjoy coming up with my own things. So it's like, why wouldn't I take a step back from it in that way?
SPEAKER_00And I think a lot of people would benefit from that, right? Of of taking that step back and being able to broaden out a bit more. These devices and and these platforms are designed in ways to try to encourage us to use them so often. And we need to be able to try to push back against that.
SPEAKER_01It feels like a big scary unknown. And like, I mean, like a problem that I have is like I'm trying to avoid myself and my own feelings and my own experience of things, or I feel like I want somebody to tell me what my experience should be of stuff because that feels easier than formulating my own thoughts or figuring out my own feelings. But now that I've done it, it's like it is a little more work, maybe, but it's so much more rewarding to like figure out what your experience of something is versus like watching a movie and like what did I think of that versus what do all the reviews say? You know, I got really invested in like what is what does everyone think? And there is like a desire for that communal experience. Like it's not that different from like wanting to take a college class versus just like read a book. But again, that experience is replicable in real life in a way that is so much more rewarding. But it's also is not none of it's a substitute for having your own experience of things that you don't even have to tell anybody about. You can just have live in your own head and it feels like it's going to be uncomfortable. But when you give yourself a chance, you might realize it's not so bad.
SPEAKER_00Very well said. Just before we close off, as you mentioned earlier, you have a new book out called A Physical Education. Do you want to give us an idea of what you're writing about in there and what you're trying to have people take away from it?
SPEAKER_01This book is a combination of my own personal story of making a transition from being really dieting focused, cardio focused, into trying out lifting weights for the first time. It's that story, plus all of the science of like, how was I affected by all of the running and dieting? How exactly does lifting weights contribute to your body in ways that all of the cardio and dieting can be destructive? And then as I was researching this book, I found out this is not just a physical thing, it's a it's an emotional thing, it's a mental thing, a brain thing. There's literal changes in your brain that come about from investing in one type of physical activity and way of eating versus another. And it ties in culturally to how we see ourselves and how, you know, speaking of tech and the sort of like enslavement in a way that's taking place. I mean, what I hated about TikTok was the fact that I spent a significant amount of my time where I was clearly like helping the algorithm sort through everything and be like, is this good or is this bad? And it's not like dieting is exactly like that, but it's keeping you, you're you're being like encouraged to focus outward on how can I make myself okay versus like, am I okay, physically okay, mentally, emotionally, and in your body. So there's a lot that ties in there. I mean, but I think it's uh a good amount of story, there's a good amount of science. So if those are your things, it might be worth checking out. It's not a book that's going to like, it's not like a book-length argument for getting into working out. I'm like, everyone knows they should be working out. It's more about what are the forces that are at play that make us feel guilty when we maybe shouldn't. What are the forces at play that we could be investing in differently in order to push back on some of that toxic messaging.
SPEAKER_00Sounds fascinating. And I'll put a link in the show notes if anyone wants to check it out. Grab a coffee. You definitely should. Casey, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been really great talking to you. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, same. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00Casey Johnson is the creator of the She's a Beast newsletter and the author of A Physical Education. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and it's hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.comslash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.