How Social Media Annexes Your Cognitive Landscape

In my 2016 book, Deep Work, I proposed a strictly binary approach to social media: you should perform an honest cost/benefit analysis on the social media platforms in your life, and quit all services that don’t provide substantially more benefits than costs with respect to things you truly value.

The issue with this idea, as I discovered, is that many people could identify a small number of important benefits provided to them by particular social media platforms that couldn’t be easily replaced. Two common examples of such benefits include sharing photos of your kids with relatives on Instagram, and keeping up with important community or support organizations that coordinate using Facebook Groups.

This is problematic because once you allow one of these platforms into your life for any reason, they have a way of annexing your cognitive landscape well beyond the boundaries of your original intent.