Take Back Your Life from Social Media with Amelia Hruby

Itching to ditch Instagram? Foster and Cesar sit down with feminist writer, philosopher, and podcaster Amelia Hruby, author of Your Attention is Sacred and host of the Off the Grid podcast, for a conversation about social media addiction, the attention economy, and what it really means to reclaim your life, your creativity, and your authentic self from the algorithms designed to keep you scrolling. From the hidden cost of being a content creator on social media to the radical idea that you don't need Instagram to build a thriving business or creative career, this episode explores intentional living, digital boundaries, and the quiet, sacred power of choosing where you put your attention. If you’re burned out, creatively drained, or quietly resentful of the time you spend on your phone, this one’s for you.

In this episode they explore: 

• What happens to your sense of self when you spend years trying to please an algorithm? 
• The one thing no one tells you about quitting social media 
• Can you actually build a creative business or career without social media?

Amelia Hruby

• Buy her book Your Attention is Sacred (Except on Social Media)
• Listen to her podcast Off the Grid: Leaving Social Media
• Get her FREE guide: 100 Ways to Share Your Work & Life Without Social Media

If this episode spoke to you, you will love What is Healthy Screentime? where we explore reclaiming real connection with ourselves and others. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram and TikTok. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Receive his newsletter Insights That Matter
• Get guided meditation from Cesar on his website 
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum doula services
• Receive her newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

Editor: Bessie Fong

Special Guest: Amelia Hruby

This episode is brought to you by Arlene Thornton & Associates

Transcript

What am I doing with my attention? Do I want to pay it? I just really like to be soft on the people and hard on the systems. I think it's very important to be critical at that level of the corporation and the system that enables it. But why be hard on each other? If nothing else, I just want to encourage people to like de-center social media from their lives.
Welcome to Beauty in the Break. Here we explore stories of how barriers are broken, both within ourselves and within the world. I'm Foster Wilson. And I'm Cesar Cardona. This is a home for you, questioning the rules you inherited and choosing your own path forward. We are here with you on this messy and courageous journey. Let's dive in.
Welcome back, everyone, to Beauty in the Break. I am so excited for our guest today. We have Amelia Hruby with us. She is a feminist writer and podcaster with a PhD in philosophy, which is a combination I quite enjoy.
She is the host of Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media. And her new book, Your Attention is Sacred, Except on Social Media, is out now. And both of us have read it. And I am just so excited to dive into this topic with you. Amelia, thank you for being here.
Hey there. Thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me. I've really been looking forward to this conversation.
Yeah, a little backstory is that so we had a podcast episode come out last year about technology and it has been one of our I think was our top two performing podcast episodes ever. And so I was like, oh, there's a real need here in terms of information about how to get off social media. It just seems like a lot of people questioning their relationship to both their phones and also apps.
And immediately, I mean, in that episode I mentioned you as well, but immediately I'm like, we've got to have Amelia on the show because now we really have like a vested audience who wants to get the information that you have. And your book is so wonderful. We really enjoyed it. And I want to dive into all of that. But first I want to ask you, Amelia, what's beautiful in your world today?
Today, I think the beautiful thing in my world is probably my garden. It is, you know, just about to be summer. I think the solstice is in a few days when we're recording this. It'll, I guess when it comes out, we can say it is summer and the plants have arrived. Things are lush and abundant. And it's such a pleasure to be outside.
I actually, I actually, this spring, literally knocked a window out in my office to put in a door so I could go straight from my desk to the backyard garden. And it's been so beautiful all around for me. So that's what's beautiful in my world today.
I love that so much. Well, it really brings me to my first question because we, your book talks about attention and you're talking about this garden and cultivating a garden of attention, which is a theme you have.
So attention, and I'm going to, I'm going to butcher your words a little bit so you can correct me, but you have this definition of attention about that there is a roots from the word attention in tending to things and tenderness and having tenderness. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because this is the crux of like all we're going to, we're going to explore today.
Yeah. So the root of the word attention is tender, which means to stretch. And it's related, it's the same root as the words tend and tender. And so I think there's this really beautiful etymological, but also to me, just like magical, intimate connection between these words, between attention and tenderness.
And for me, I think the way I like to break down the word attention is attention is a matter of tending to things. And I think that when we wrap in that sense of tending, attention becomes about care and it becomes about relationality, which is so different than many of the ways we talk about attention, right? Where it's like the attention economy and our attention is extracted.
And, you know, I think that's certainly happening in certain places, but I like to zoom out and think about attention as how we be with the world. And that's so important and fundamental to our humanity.
You also made a really good point in your book about the difference between paying attention and giving attention.
Yeah. I think that, you know, as a philosopher, language just fascinates me. And in English, we use the phrase paying attention, right? It's such a common directive. We say it to kids all the time, pay attention. As soon as you get in school, you're trained to pay attention.
And I think that throughout the book, I really wanted to shift from that idea of paying attention to giving attention. And a real gift of putting out the book is that now I've also heard from a lot of readers for whom English is not like their only language. And they've shared with me that, you know, other languages have different idioms here.
And I think it's kind of like lending attention, offering attention, like the sort of phrasing that each language uses is a little different. And I think it is somewhat uniquely like English and even, I would say, like American, that we pay our attention. Like it is transactional.
And it's just, it just sort of gives you something to hold on to there when you think about like, oh, what am I doing with my attention? Do I want to pay it?
Yeah. It makes me really, I mean, I'm immediately jumping to your garden with all of these flowers and I don't know, fruits and vegetables perhaps, but like a garden being so lush and tending a garden.
And you're giving attention to the plants in there. And it also feels very motherly to me or parental if you're gender, removing the gender from it. Like it has this, this nurturing, I guess, just nature within the word.
And I think it's such a, you're right, it's such a different experience than we normally like snap to, pay attention, give, you know, give us your money, right? Give us your attention and the apps have our attention.
But when you think about it, the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of attention is giving my children attention.
And that is immediately being in the present moment with them, sharing time with them, being curious about them, looking in their eyes, like, you know, and that cannot involve a phone whatsoever to be able to, to give attention to, to them.
Yeah. I think there's an intimate connection between attention and presence, but I also like to celebrate, like we have so many modes of attention, right?
Sometimes we do have that like full presence with other people, whether they're our children or our partners or our friends, family members, like we can really be with them.
And then sometimes, you know, your kid or your pet is there and you're like, okay, I know you want to show me the Pokemon for the 75th time.
And yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm like trying to read this poem, you know, like our attention can do so many things.
And I think that's worth celebrating too, that it is so flexible in its form.
Yeah, really and truly. So I think we have two kinds, we have two kinds of listeners and there's a lot of overlap Venn diagram here, but I want to kind of touch on both of the people that might be listening today.
So we have people who are going to identify as social media consumers, which is probably many of us. And then we also have people who will identify as social media producers of some kind.
Whether they're influencers, content creators or not, I think a lot of people are out there making some kind of content to promote their art, at least in me in particular. I know a lot of people who are artists who are trying to promote their art, their music, their business.
Yeah, like you work with a lot of business owners and people who are, every business owner is trying to put out content on social media, right?
So I want to get to both of these types of people listening. And like I said, many overlap. So your words from your book are the algorithm, the apps sort of generate striving producers and then passive consumers, which I can definitely see myself in both of those things.
So if we start with the consumer side of it, can you tell us a little bit about your story? Because you are now off social media, but it wasn't always that way, right? So what's your story behind consuming social media and your experience with it?
Yeah, so like the millennial that I am, I got on social media first in high school when I got a Facebook account. I mean, I had MySpace and other things before then, but it probably started with Facebook in high school. In college, I got on Instagram. At some point, I got on Twitter.
And I enjoyed the connective aspects of social media. I met people there. And then often those relationships would translate into my real life or sometimes they wouldn't. I was very active on Tumblr for a long time. And who knows who any of those people were with their screen names that I was chatting with or reposting or, you know, hanging out with all the time.
And so for me, in the beginning, I very much was just a consumer and participant in social media. You know, I wasn't trying to be a creator. I wasn't trying to be an influencer. I was just enjoying moving through the platforms, taking in what other people were creating, and then making connections with them through those things.
And I think that during that time, you know, this was still in the age of the chronological feed, a day where you could still, you could finish scrolling your social media account, right? If you only followed so many people and they didn't have anything new, you would just be done. I clearly remember finishing my Instagram most days. Like I would just scroll and see everybody's stuff and be like, okay, I've seen this before and now I'm finished.
There's like a little dot at the bottom, right? It was like a dot and it would say you have seen end of whatever, right?
All the post for today, end of something, yeah.
And then of course, you know, Twitter invented or an engineer at Twitter invented the like pull to refresh and then you get a whole set of new things. And then over time, I think like many people, I just found myself feeling really drawn in.
And I would say there were sort of two experiences I had often, which was that I would sort of get on social media and start scrolling and then realize that, you know, hours had passed or just way more time than I thought I was spending there was passing as I was scrolling.
And then also I started to notice like, oh, this is beginning to impact decisions I'm making in my real life, particularly purchasing decisions. So as ads were integrated into the platforms, I noticed, you know, oh, I'm buying products I never thought about. I now own, for me, it was like girlfriend collective leggings. I owned so many pairs of those leggings made out of old water bottles.
Oh my gosh.
And it's just because they kept getting, I got the targeted advertising. At that point in time, I was like a 25 year old white woman in Chicago who had disposable income. So I was their ideal demographic. They wanted me and they got me. And I just kept buying.
It's like our online QVC. It's like our generation's QVC, perhaps. Like we just couldn't stop.
I think so.
My gosh.
And it just delivers it up to us, right? And, you know, then you start buying these different things. And I didn't really believe it was.
It was impacting me until I left and I realized how much stuff I stopped buying. But as a consumer, I just noticed how much I would scroll, how much time I would lose to scrolling. I noticed how often I would pull out my phone. You know, I could no longer stand in a line or sit on the bus or, you know, even sometimes driving the impulse to like pick up my phone at a stoplight, things that we know we shouldn't be doing, but so many people still do.
So I really noticed that pull as a social media consumer, as a user on the platforms. And then there's so many more layers when we get to the producer part, but I'll pause there for now.
Yeah. I mean, I noticed that too, of course. I think that pull is there with or without apps too, because there's just so many notifications and communication that has to happen.
And this is something I want to talk our conversation today. I want it to involve this idea of not having shame or guilt for what has happened to us in our society and personally how we feel.
Because I know that there are a lot of people who feel shame about the amount of time they spend on social media. And we just have enough of that. We have enough shame and guilt in our lives. And sometimes it's particularly women or particularly moms who are like, I know I shouldn't and I can't quit it or whatever.
And I just want to open the conversation to be like, this is a safe space full of grace and full of like, we're going to offer up, you know, hopefully Amelia will give us lots of tips about how to adjust that relationship.
Yeah. I mean, it's designed to appeal to the parts of us that are so primordial and so ancient in us that our reward system is older than our discipline system.
So it's very hard for us to battle that one side to the other. They have almost all the funds in the world to find that information out. And so then they're able to utilize and dive into that and to pull you along in ways that you wouldn't see yourself doing otherwise.
Yeah. Something I really like to hold to, which is sort of a phrase I learned from my organizing days, is I just really like to be soft on the people and hard on the systems. And so I am never here to critique any individual about their social media use. I think we all have very personal relationships with our phones and the apps. And there are a lot of factors that impact how much time we might spend on social media.
I will be hard on the companies that run these apps and that own them. I will be hard on their founders who are now billionaires as a result of the extraction and exploitation of people's personal data. I think it's very important to be critical at that level of the corporation and the system that enables it.
But I completely agree with both of you. Why be hard on each other? That's not the point of this. We can support each other through making different choices that are actually nourishing for us. And that's what I want from any conversation about social media.
Yeah. I mean, it's just it's so important that we remember. I think maybe I heard you say this. You were on on Glennon Doyle's podcast. We can do hard things. I'm not sure if I heard you say it there or somewhere else. But the idea that we have taken on the responsibility for what's happening, like, oh, it's my fault that I'm addicted to Instagram, which is the same issue that we had with recycling, where the big companies were
were saying, like, it's up to the individual consumer to recycle. It's your job. It's your job. Meanwhile, we're actually not even recycling those things. You're recycling, shipping them off to another country's landfill. And it's a big tech company problem. It's not an individual consumer problem, necessarily. Of course, we can play our part. But like holding the right people accountable, I think, I think the intention here.
Yeah. Yeah. Dispersing or spreading the accountability all across, not just leaving it to just the people who are being manipulated the entire time. Same goes with junk food as well. I remember when I think it was during the Obama administration, when they started, he put in one of the legislations that on the menu there, they would have the amount of calories that are on the food. And people were just astounded. Like, let me eat what I want to eat. And also, that company, they know what they're doing. So they need to hold a little more accountability in what they're doing.
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's both that we want to be critical of the systems and the giant companies that benefit from their lobbyists and the cash infusions they make. And then I think the unfortunate reality is that each of us as individuals has to grapple with the fallout of the impact of these things on our lives, right?
And so, you know, with social media, you might be noticing your attention feeling fractured. You might be noticing that you struggle to read a book or finish a movie. You might be noticing that you feel very addicted to your phone. So it's like, what do we do? If we don't want to be hard on ourselves, which I don't want us to be. Also, how do we work toward, you know, a better life and a better relationship to these technologies so that they're not simply like taking over or, you know, getting us kind of stuck in, as you mentioned earlier, that like primeval,
primordial part of our brain. Like we don't want to live just from there. So how do we then make shifts without being hard on ourselves is always a question I'm holding.
And you mentioned like, what are the alternatives, right? And I'm thinking of people wanting to like quit social media or delete the apps or be on it less. We also have to offer something as the alternative to that. It's not just quitting the thing. I'm reminded of when I was in high school, my mom had a nonprofit group that was trying to help teenagers not drink alcohol. And the case I was making is that these high school kids have nothing else to do.
So we can't just remove the quote unquote like bad stuff. We have to actually provide them with like, where's the teen center? Where are we actually providing activities for these kids to do to entertain themselves, to be social that doesn't include alcohol and drugs and not just remove it and make it like a punitive.
So could you speak a little bit to the alternatives that we have if we want to step away from the consumption of social media?
Absolutely. And I love this example you've given because I think I have a very similar ethos when I think about any behavioral shift that I want to make. For me personally, discipline is not the most effective strategy. And restriction or detoxing is also not a very effective strategy for me.
I've learned that restriction also has downsides, especially when we talk about food. And so when I came to my phone, I was like, well, I can't just start like calorie counting my minutes on my phone. Like tracking in that way is not going to work for me. It does for some people, but I haven't found it to be very effective.
What I offer in the book is really beginning with the practice of noticing. I think all change has to come from a place of noticing. And a common practice that I share here and that many other folks who write about attention share is beginning with a sort of attention audit. So this is just literally tending to your attention. Taking a day where you notice and maybe make some notes on what am I giving my attention to? Okay, when I wake up, what am I thinking about? What's the first thing I do?
Is it roll over in bed and look at my phone? Is it roll over in bed and look at my partner or my cat who sleeps on the pillow? Like where do I send my attention first in the day? And then as you move through the day, just noticing, what are you attending to? And also, how does it make you feel? So for me, I often leave that piece out, or I think a lot of attention audits do. Well, I'm noticed that I reach for my phone first thing. How am I feeling about that? What am I doing on my phone? So I think we have to start with this noticing practice.
And it ideally is a shame-free noticing practice. And it's also a change-free noticing practice. You don't actually try to shift your behavior at all. You just notice and you document in whatever way that you can. For me, it's normally, honestly, a note app, a note on my phone. I open my notes app and I start making notes. I've done attention audits many times over the years when I start to feel the pull of technology a little bit too much.
And then once you have that information, once you notice what you've been noticing, once you identify like, okay, when I do this thing, it makes me feel not good. You can kind of go through your notes and be like, okay, these are things that were pleasurable or I enjoyed them or they felt worthwhile.
Maybe they were hard, maybe they were hard, but in a good way. And these were things that felt draining or exhausting or they made me feel insecure or self-conscious or I just didn't enjoy this. Then we start to try to figure out how can we give more of our attention to the things that brought us those feelings we want more of? And how do we give less of it to the things that we want less of?
I think a lot of people from there, they focus a lot on, okay, now I build in the restriction. Now I know, you know, this is the thing that makes me feel bad. So how do I restrict that? How do I cut back on it? But I like to take the opposite approach. I like to go to the list of things that make you feel good and ask, how do I put more of that thing in my day?
And for me, that meant building in a morning walk. That meant building in more reading of physical books, expanding my garden, which is three times as big this year as it was last year. And so as I bring in more of the things that when I give them my attention, they make me feel the ways I want to feel, it just creates less time for the things that feel worse. And I am able to sort of shift in that way.
That's where I would start. That's sort of what's coming up first is like the noticing practice, the attention audit, and then the leaning into what feels good. I think that's a really nice way to begin making these shifts.
Yeah. And could you give us a bit of your own personal testimony on the changes that you've noticed within your own self, your mind, how you think, how you approach your day to day within the last year, in addition to this 3X garden?
Yes, much bigger garden. You know, I think that the biggest shift overall is I just feel like my thoughts and feelings are my own, or I'm much more aware of the influences on them.
I don't feel so pulled by every news article I come across or every ad I scroll by. It's not that I'm not seeing these things. I am still on the internet, even if I'm not on social media.
But I'm able to stay so much closer to my own beliefs, intentions, and feelings states. I have such a more centered and grounded nervous system. I have a much clearer, you know, sense of my personal values and politics. And I find that it's much easier to stay in that.
I was a micro-influencer. I launched a book on social media. I spent hours and hours and hours a day on Instagram specifically. And at that point in time, I cared about what the algorithm cared about. Like, I knew about the news it served me. I cared about the celebrities that it told me were important.
I aligned my opinions with the influencers who I thought were cool and went along those paths. I was very concerned with my public image and how I presented myself all the time. And now that has just all fallen away. Like, I really feel like I'm so much more clear about who I am and what I have to offer. And it just feels so good. That sounds so simple, but like, it feels really good in a way that I just couldn't access this before.
Well, you say the line about it's all kind of fallen away, which immediately gave me the vision of feeling lighter in your day-to-day, in your mind. Sometimes people in their own body, carrying that stuff shows up in your body, it can make you feel more weighted. Do you feel lighter as well going through your life here? Because you're missing out on stuff, right? The fact that, in no way am I saying that these are stuff that needs to be focused on, that needs to not be missed on.
Like, FOMO is fear, you know, it's fear of missing out. At some level, fear can be an illusion in a lot of ways. What would you say to the people who are thinking about this, who want to pull back, but they worry to themselves, like, I'm going to miss out?
The first thing I would say is, this is so common. Like, this is really normal. And most people experience FOMO if they make a big social shift of any kind. And so I just want to normalize that no one's alone in feeling FOMO.
And when people want to leave social media, this is typically one of the first things they bring to me. Like, what am I going to miss out on? How am I ever going to know what my friends are doing? How am I ever going to know what's happening in the news? How am I ever going to know what the memes are? I'm going to be so behind on every trend. How am I going to know what to wear? How am I going to know what to eat? How am I going to know where to go?
It sounds like high school a little bit.
It is, I think. Like, because high school is such an intense period of socialization, where we are really looking to external cues for who we are and how to be. And social media, in my opinion, repeats a lot of that dynamic.
But in a way where you tend to just get back a lot more of what you're already looking at. You're not just seeing whoever lives in your school district. You're seeing like a very algorithmically curated reflection back socialization patterns.
But I think for folks who are experiencing FOMO or who are afraid of leaving because they don't want to miss out, what I have found in my own personal experience is that anything I really wanted, I could find elsewhere.
The local events I want to go to, there are newsletters. There are bulletin boards at the library and the coffee shop I go to every week. Like, there are other spaces to find out what's happening locally.
For the friends that I really care about, we figured out other ways to stay in touch.
Do I sometimes get the news about their life late? Yes.
Do I sometimes miss that something's happened? Absolutely. But people catch on. And if they care about you, they will realize like, oh, this person's not on social media.
Did I lose friends? Do I miss out on things? Am I regularly like eight weeks behind on a meme?
Yes. But I can live with that. Because I get what I talked about earlier. Instead of being up on every trend, I'm actually clear about what really matters to me.
Yeah, I would just say like the FOMO is real, but there are other benefits like missing out. And also a lot of people now have like JOMO, right? The joy of missing out. So you can just embrace JOMO instead.
And join me off social media.
That's so good. See, I'm behind on that. What I hear from what you said earlier of what you have found in this is your own authenticity.
And I think that requires getting quiet. And that can be in a number of different ways. And one of the ways we get quiet is we remove the noise. And sometimes social media is a lot, a whole lot of noise with a few little things in there that we really were excited to know about or glad we knew about.
But to know yourself and to be authentic within yourself requires getting quiet and going inwards. And it sounds like you have found that and that's worth it. Like that is worth it.
Yeah, I think so. And I will also say that some people leave social media and they feel very lost. Don't want to present leaving social media as like the one thing that will help you find your authentic self.
Not that that's what you're saying, but sometimes people want me to say that. And I don't think that's it. Like it was one choice in a series of many life decisions I made that really helped me get exactly that quiet that you're talking about.
And I also think for anyone feeling really overwhelmed or burned out in their life in general, turning down the noise on what you can and getting quiet again is just a really great first step in healing. And social media is designed to be noisy, right? There's no more end of the feed. You can't get to the bottom anymore. It is designed to always put more and more in your face.
And so whether you want to leave social media or not, if you're in a real period of overwhelm or burnout, like a great first step can be deleting the apps from your phone, taking some time away from them just to give yourself space to find that quiet for a bit of like healing and reconnection.
And then maybe more for that like authentic self-discovery. There are many reasons to crave that quieter space.
Yeah, exactly. In many ways to get there. Can you dig into now the sort of producer side of social media, the side that we are not only scrolling, but we are also making content and stories and things like that and talk about your experience there and kind of where you went with it and what you're up against?
When I talk to people who are primarily just consumers or participants on social media, like the sort of complaints they have for me about social media is like, I don't see my friend's stuff anymore. I spend too much time here. I'm probably doom scrolling. Like I should probably get off the app.
But most of them, like they get enough of what they want, which is like cute animal videos and funny political content and like other stuff. And then it ends up outweighing like why leave? Well, I don't know. I get enough of what I want. So I'll probably just stay here anyway, even though I see the problems. That's like what I hear from folks who are just consumers on social media.
We move to the producer side. The list of complaints is so different and tenfold, I find. And so to speak to my own experience, since that's what you asked about, like in I think around 2015 or 16, I started moving from just posting cute pictures of my trips and the books I was reading to actively making content for social media.
I started a series called Feminist Mantra Monday, where I was sharing these like feminist affirmations and then writing blog posts and like super long captions explaining the sort of value system that I saw within feminism and pairing that with the things I was learning in my PhD program because I did a concentration in gender studies. And so I wanted to kind of bridge the two worlds I was living in academically and socially. And I created this series. And as I started creating that, I sort of moved into being more of a content creator.
Eventually, I gathered those posts in a self-guided journal, which I self-published. And then eventually that was picked up by a traditional publisher. And that book came out in 2020. And along that way, I launched a crowdfunded podcast. I started guiding workshops and selling stickers and all sorts of things online. I connected with brands and did some brand work. So between 2016 and 2020, you know, my Instagram platform grew quite a lot. And it was never my like full-time job. It was like a tiny little side hustle.
I had going on. I had going on. But I invested a lot of time and money. And once you start actively creating content and trying to grow your social media following, then you're thinking of the algorithm in an entirely different way. It is no longer this cool thing that serves you more of what you've liked looking at. And sometimes things you really don't want to look at. It is now both this like benefactor and adversary.
That you are constantly asking for support and then being really grateful when you go viral or get views or it likes you or a post. And then being like you're on a whole other journey when things flop or you get crickets or you post something and, you know, less than 1% of your following sees it.
And so when you get into that cycle, for me, what I found is it really mapped onto a lot of what I was learning about attachment and therapy at the time. And I just became, I started to notice I was like very anxiously attached to Instagram, which to me meant I was always checking on it. I was always worried I wasn't doing the right things. I always wanted it to favor me and give me what I wanted, which was attention, other people's attention, likes, comments, views.
And to try to try to get that, I was just performing all the time. You know, I was trying to be whatever I saw working for other people. The other things that went viral, the things that were doing well. If I had something do well, I would go all in on that and do like 10 more versions of it.
And it created this really kind of false sense of self that I was online. And it created this dynamic where I was just constantly checking in and worried that I wasn't doing enough or I wasn't doing the right things. And that leads to that like striving. I was always striving to produce and to please the algorithm.
And I think that this is what I hear from a lot of social media creators is that you're always in this sort of striving and pleasing relationship with the algorithm. And you are also noticing that like across the apps, engagement is plummeting. And there isn't actually any meritocracy here.
I think a lot of us, especially I will say like millennials like myself who went to liberal arts colleges and had good SAT scores, like high achievers. We were like, if we do it good enough, we can win Instagram. We will get our A plus. We will get our gold star. And the algorithm does not work that way. Like it is not a meritocracy. It does not care if you like follow the rules or did the good enough things. It is just like an open market for attention.
And so that just causes all of these problems. And then you internalize so much about your performance on social media as like about you as a person. And yeah, now that I'm like talking about it, I'm like, oh, there's a lot to bring back.
Well, to me, what comes up for me is like the chasing element of it. My side of this is like I've gone back and forth and back and forth. Like I was afraid to be on it for a while. And then I kind of went forward with my poetry and I was handwriting things.
And that was kind of doing well. And then, but I was scared to put my face out there. And then I started putting my face out there, my poetry. And it made strides sort of, but I was always chasing it, right? It was always chasing. It never really went viral with anything.
And then, you know, thanks to your episode, listening to that and getting into your work. It was around the time when we were starting this podcast. And I was like, you know, I really think that maybe I want to move away from social media because long form content in podcasting is like where I thrive, where actually my ideas can come across. And I'm not trying to fit it into 60 seconds here.
And that felt so good. And then it was like, well, wait, how are we going to market the show? And then we went right back into, you know, producing content for Instagram and now TikTok and now YouTube Shorts.
And so this show is also on YouTube. And so I have so much struggle with that because I feel like we're always still chasing it. And we spend as much time editing the podcast as we do editing social clips and the posting of it. You know, that's driving is something I'm very disenchanted within this moment, this very moment.
So what does that do to us like as creative people to be putting our stuff out in this fast paced world?
This vicious cycle.
I think where I want to go as I answer this, maybe I'm skipping the like problem and I want to jump to the solution. But like to me, this is all about like redefining success. And that's actually the answer here. What does it do to us to be chasing that cycle?
I mean, I find with the hundreds of people I've spoken to, it stresses us out, it wears us down, it burns us out. It makes us have a very transactional relationship with our creative process. We over index the performance on social media to indicate the value of the work itself. We only think work can be good if it performs well online.
Like so much happens when we get into this relationship with sharing our work online as the only way to find an audience for it. And to me, it's that latter part where it's like, you know, the myth.
I think that social media really, these companies want us to believe that it's like a free, easy way to get the things we make in front of people. But actually what we're doing is just doing a lot of free labor for social media companies to fill their platforms with stuff that they can show to people in between ads, which is really their goal, right? Is to get the ads in front of people.
And then we just provide, it's actually like our stuff that's the commercial between the real content, which is the ads to them. That's what they care about. That's what they sell, right? All of that does a real number on our emotions, our psychological state, our wellness, and our creativity.
But to me, the answer to all of that has been redefining success. And that's why it's been so important for me since leaving social media that I can come back to center. You know, it's not just a sense of like, oh, I get to be my authentic self in some like, you know, fluffy way that I'm saying that, like hand wavy way. It's like, actually, once I actually know what I want, because I'm not looking to influencers to tell me, because I'm not pulled by ads all the time, once I actually know what I want, I can recalibrate all of my work around getting that.
And so that has been the way that I've maneuvered this. And I find that like, I don't need social media to get anything that I want. We don't need social media to have creative careers to make money from our work to get it out into the world. We need each other. That's when we go to social media, what we're reaching toward is each other, through this like huge beast of a machine. And I just moved the machine out of the way, not try to reach to the other people.
Is it maybe a slower process? Does it have different metrics? Does it feel different? Yes. But in my experience, it does work just differently.
Yeah, you have a whole list of ways that people can think about marketing their business or their art. That's not social media, right? A hundred ways?
Yeah. A hundred ways to share your work and life off social media. Yeah. That was one of the first pieces of content. Speaking of content, I made that for my Instagram when I was leaving Instagram.
I'm just going to leave this right here as I peace out. I remember that. You found it. You brought it to me. We discussed it. When you found it, had Amelia just dropped that? Or was it just left there?
No, no, no, no. I think I got it off of your website, actually. But to me, it was so eye-opening because it's so simple sometimes. Like, we have this default. Like, social media is the first and the last stop for marketing whatever it is.
But you have put a flyer up at the local coffee shop or the neighborhood gym or something. And it's like, oh, yeah. Like, sometimes when I'm thinking about how our show can reach more people and more people can find it, I'm just like, I spend so much time creating reels and TikToks that it's like, who's got time for anything else? Who's got time for just, like, going to the gym and posting something?
And of course, we know, like, direct to consumer, like, texting people, calling people, whatever, all of that, mentioning in person. But that's about all we had as our marketing plan. And then you have this wonderful list of other ways to think about what might fit authentically for your personal business or art.
Yeah. On the one hand, sometimes I think it's obvious, right? Like, why are we taking everything to social media to put it in front of a bunch of strangers instead of just, like, telling our friends? Or, like, I have gotten work in the most unobvious places, like, telling my 75-year-old aunt about a project I was doing and then her referring me to someone she used to work with who hired me on, like, a five-figure contract, right? Like, that stuff can happen.
But I think that our impulse to go straight to social media instead of to each other actually sort of belies a deeper dynamic, which is that it's actually very vulnerable to ask the people you care about to care about the things you're doing.
And for many people I talk to, it feels less vulnerable to just put it on social media.
And then if nobody likes it, you blame it on the algorithm.
You're like, oh, not my fault.
You know, like, there's a whole shield that we build up over there.
We would rather broadcast it than share it with, like, out, far out than share it with the people we're in the room with because it's a really different vulnerability.
But I have found that learning to share things with the people you're around immediately, it's not always that all those people are going to listen or they're going to buy your thing.
And at a certain point, like, you can't run a whole business off of, like, your cousin's three friends and asking them to share everything, right?
Like, you have to actually, like, get a community and audience of your own.
But I just think so much would change if we stopped overlooking the people we already know and if we trusted our relationships and made genuine requests and shares.
And then when people share things with us, if we showed up for them, that's a big part of it to me, too.
I think it's way easier to try to, like, put up a post and just broadcast something.
You know, say you want to lead a workshop.
It's so much easier to just put your workshop on social media than to go to five other workshops and share your work in them.
But that latter action is the one that I see build businesses and careers over and over and over again.
I'm going to speak to this very directly because I have this to a T, okay?
So three years ago, I pivoted away from film to become a doula.
And when I started my business, I immediately made a new Instagram account and started thinking about clips I could post there.
And I want to say it was before I found your work.
But this was something that just popped into my head of, like, I'll do this.
But then this doesn't feel right because the work that I'm doing as a doula is very intimate work.
It's not like I have said something like top five movies to watch while you're in postpartum.
What I'm doing is, like, heart-centered, soul, one-on-one work.
It requires that kind of connection with people.
So instead, what I did was reached out to other doulas I knew and had coffee with them and made deeper connections.
Instantly, the first two people that I met with also were people that were, like, kind of stepping out from it.
The number of referrals I've gotten directly from those people has been, I mean, more than 12.
And then I would meet other doulas, meet other doulas.
And then I would also meet adjacent people in the profession.
So for me, it's, like, lactation consultants.
I would meet with those people and form bonds there, refer people, refer my clients to them.
And then sometimes they refer their clients to me.
And, like, I never touch social media again for that business.
And I have a thriving business with clients that call me out of the blue.
I heard your name from so-and-so.
I don't even know who so-and-so is.
Right?
Like, it just, but I had to build that network.
And it's also, it required a smaller network because my business is full at, like, 12 to 15 clients a year.
I don't need a million people commenting on a post.
They're actually probably not going to hire me at that point.
You know?
Like, they're not in my neighborhood.
Like, this is a very small, closely knit community, even here in Los Angeles.
So I just want to speak to that.
Like, if that is a type of business that resonates with anyone here, there is so much value in this kind of deep connection rather than the wide connection.
Yeah.
I mean, this is something I really work with people on because I think that social media has just become the default for so many things.
Right?
It's like, you want to start a business?
Make a new social media account.
You want to sell your old bike that's been in the basement for two years?
Put it on social media.
You want to reconnect with your high school fellow students?
Get on social media.
Like, it's the default for so much.
And I think that, if nothing else, I just want to encourage people to, like, de-center social media from their lives.
You don't have to do what I did.
You don't have to leave entirely.
But how can you, you know, sort of make a list of, like, what are the things I go to social media for?
What are those needs?
You know?
Events and marketplace and groups are ones that I hear, like, that's why people are on Facebook.
They don't care about the feed.
They don't care about the profile, but they need marketplace and they're in some groups.
So, like, okay, identify that.
And then see if you can just find one other way to get that need met.
You know?
Like, could you look at Craigslist instead?
Could you go to a local thrift store instead of being on marketplace?
Could you, you know, instead of going to a Facebook group, could you call three people you know that maybe do kind of have that interest and try to do it together?
Like, and it's not that you have to stop doing what you're doing.
But, again, it's like, okay, those are actual needs you have that are taking you to social media.
And can you brainstorm some other ways to get those met?
And I think that pretty quickly you'll find, like, you have a richer relational life.
It's your noticing what you're noticing kind of thing.
It is very much a lot of what you're saying about attention in your book.
And even in this conversation has put me in mind of, as a Buddhist, the mindfulness of where your attention is.
And also, you also said this word as well, the attachment to things also.
Where in Buddhism, we find out very quickly that in life, there are things that are dissatisfactory.
We're dissatisfied with them because we're grasping onto them.
And we know they're going, they're subject to change.
But we grasp onto it so hard to something.
And it just really causes us to want it again.
And want the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
And that's where addiction comes in.
And yet again, we have a whole device that could just, that leans right into that.
Oh, you want more?
We have more for you.
Don't worry.
Just you lay back and we have that.
You also said in your book that there will always be something to pay attention to.
And our finite amount of attention that we have has now been given this infinite amount of things to which we can pay attention, give attention to.
In a lot of ways, and I'm coming straight from a personal side as a Buddhist and as a person who teaches meditation,
it essentially boils down to noticing the mind of the inflection of the passing, metaphorically speaking, the scrolling up in the thoughts of your mind every single moment.
And when you can find those, what am I doing here?
Why am I doing it?
Then you can find the spaces of, this is not something that's for me.
This is something that's for me.
There are, I don't know how familiar you are with meditation or mindfulness or whatnot,
but those two sides really appealed to me when you were speaking because where we put our attention in our own mind will also start projecting outward onto this phone.
I always like talking, speaking to practicing Buddhists and meditation and mindfulness instructors because it's not a part of my personal practice,
but it resonates so much with the reflective nature of my work and what I find so important in all of this, right?
It's about, I think many forms of meditation are about noticing what we're noticing.
Some of them are about attempting to clear the mind or, you know, notice nothing or everything, depending on how you're thinking about it.
But I think that there are so many, like, it's all about carving out that intentional space, finding the quiet, releasing the noise.
And I think that that is, you know, the only way that we get to any sense of an inner self, an inner voice, or beyond that, the way that all of that can sort of dissolve into just being in the world with all of it.
That's why, like, the title of the book is Your Attention is Sacred, because I think that is a sacred practice.
I think that immersing ourselves in the world, finding who we are, and then remembering that we're just one piece of this, like, brilliant cosmic system, planet, universe that we live in is really beautiful and important.
And, you know, something I wanted to insist on in the book is that the way that people talk about the attention economy is like our attention is extremely limited.
And that's just, like, part of being human.
And I think that can be true in some ways.
But I really think, like, our attention can be limitless the way that our love can be limitless the way that our emotions and, like, experiences can be limitless.
And it's just when we try to force it onto the screen that it gets so fractured and feels bad and feels like we can't have enough of it or there isn't enough of it.
There's too much.
But, like, there's always been too much.
You can't see every leaf on the tree.
You can't hear every bird in the forest.
Like, that is just, that is, like, again, like, I think that there's something really slippery happening when people say, like, oh, we live in this era where there's, like, an attention crisis and all of this is happening.
But to me, it's more about just, like, the tending to the attention, the playing with it, the nourishing it that can get us back to feeling like we belong in the world, which I guess is a lot of what this comes down to.
I could not agree more in that sense.
I could not agree more.
There's a deeper self-reflection that we can take within our own selves and find out, well, what is the thing that's needing to be served here?
And how can we find the different ways to serve it?
Like you said, the leaf on a tree, it's endless.
We're always here.
An endless amount of things that we can focus on and pay attention to.
Our job is to start noticing those moments of where am I putting this now?
A part of my job for the last 10 years have been is driving.
I can't even count how many times I've looked over and someone is on the highway and one hand looking straight at their phone.
Years ago, I stopped being angry at them.
I started feeling bad for them because it's a thing that we're just not noticing about ourselves.
It's quite dangerous, of course, obviously.
But I stopped feeling angry at them because I started recognizing that this cycle has been within us that we haven't been able to unearth or spot or see.
Yeah. I mean, distracted driving is incredibly dangerous.
And also, I have found myself doing it.
Like, I mean, I can admit that.
And it is that, especially with highway driving, where attention is challenging to maintain, and then you have this device that's just calling out to you and lighting up.
And again, it goes back to that piece of like, we are human, but we want to ideally, I think, act in our best interest and in the interest of each other and be together in that.
And I like your approach to, you know, not letting those notice things of other people's behavior lead you into anger, but allowing like this recognition that there is this bigger system, that there is some type of need that this person's brain or body or heart desires, and that's trying to be met on the phone.
And as someone who has left social media, a lot of times people think that like, I only want to be friends with people who are not on social media, or like, I don't let it into my life at all.
But like, my spouse is a social media manager, like very online.
That's phenomenal. I love that. I love that. Let us always forget that. Let us always remember, excuse me, that we shouldn't be wagging our finger at somebody who's doing the opposite.
And therefore, we shouldn't assume that somebody who is somebody else is wagging their finger, because that's just not how life works.
Yeah, exactly.
But we can, like, I always empower us, like, claim our agency, make these choices for ourselves, but recognize that other people are in different positions.
And, you know, as long as they're not on the highway driving, I embrace whatever they're doing on their phone.
Yeah, it's beautiful. And as we wrap here, this is all so much bigger than just social media and apps.
I think it's really a metaphor for so much of our life.
You mentioned at the end of your book that like, it's not just Instagram and TikTok.
It's also Google and Pinterest and Spotify and Amazon and Chachapiti.
All of these big, big, big, big, huge, enormous tech conglomerates that are really interested in not only our data, but where we are putting our attention.
And all of that, their ads are everywhere and Amazon too.
And it's so very clear when you have children who are suddenly start to have access to things like that.
We're like, wait a minute, you're looking on Pinterest, like everything there serving you information that I really don't want to be in your brain as a young woman in this world.
Like I'm just taking away from this conversation, really the intentionality behind everything we do and where we put our money, the businesses that we put our money into.
Like we've talked about a lot about B corporations and things like that, like really choosing, I want to use your podcast title off the grid, like really choosing off the grid companies to support.
And that includes where we are looking online as well.
And where we're choosing to shop with, what we're choosing to search with.
And all it is, I just want to go back to just the audit.
Like let's just start with the awareness of what our default habits are.
And is Google the only choice?
It's not the only search engine out there, you know?
So yeah, I just thank you for this whole conversation.
It's mostly like this meditative state, really thinking about these ideas and thoughts.
So thank you.
And can you tell us a little bit more about where someone could find you?
Because we know where you're not.
That was so smooth.
That was so smooth.
I did not hear that one coming.
I'm sure Amelia's heard it before.
No, it's great.
I love it every time.
Yes.
So you could find me at AmeliaHruby.com or you can listen to Off the Grid podcast anywhere you get your podcast.
You just need to search Off the Grid, leaving social media.
And as we mentioned, I wrote a book called Your Attention is Sacred, Except on Social Media, that you can find anywhere books are sold.
But I would love if you bought it directly from me at offthegrid.fun/attention.
That is how I get the most benefit from your purchase.
So I appreciate if you head there.
I love that.
Get the truly, truly independent version.
And it's a great read.
And it's an easy read.
It's like so, like, I love it.
It's so wonderful.
Thank you so much, Amelia.
This was a wonderful conversation.
And thank you for gracing us with your presence.
Thank you both for having me.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And as always, please be kind to yourself.
If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.
That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.
And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll see you next time.
Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.
Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.
Original music by Cesar & the Clew.