how to look at social media

a guide for regaining agency in the algorithmic milieu

Who are you when you’re scrolling?

To open social media is to enter a different version of yourself—one where “you” aren’t there as an observer, but as a subconscious participant. There are sights and sounds, perhaps the ambient comfort of the comments section, but “you” are just your flow state, absorbed in the video at hand.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger would identify this pre-reflective mode of looking as umsicht: a state of immersion in our environment, where perception occurs without active thought. In umsicht, you intuitively know how to cope with your experience, but you don’t actively think about it.

Scientists have found that the social media umsicht is accompanied by actual physiological changes. Your pupils constrict. Your respiration rate slightly increases. Your brain assumes a state of moderate arousal. You process what’s happening, but not deliberately, and not with conscious reflection.

This, however, is only one way to look at social media. It feels easy to process the content of a video, but you can also try processing the medium instead. Ignore what you’re supposed to be looking at, and let your pupils dilate into a state of alertness. Carefully scrutinize the presentation of your feed from the perspective of a detached observer. You’ll start noticing things: each third video is probably an advertisement; the likes and comments on the side become a strange, superimposed layer above the video.

To me, this alternate state of perception is analogous to the nineteenth-century French concept of flânerie: a mode of detached viewing, originally for the purpose of observation while walking through elements of urban life. To be a flâneur of the algorithm, you have to similarly embrace your role as an observer and coolly analyze events as they occur. This is a conscious, actively reflective state of consumption.

It’s also not fun at all. Since algorithmic flânerie requires ignoring the actual substance of the video, it defeats the point of why you probably want to engage with social media: to relax, to look at something funny, to learn something. You can’t do this from a state of aesthetic detachment; you have to immerse.

And yet occasionally detaching is incredibly important, because it helps you understand how social media actually affects you. It seems good to know, for example, that thirty percent of your feed is advertisements. When you’re in umsicht mode you don’t notice that, but simply interact with videos as they present themselves. This is also why it’s incredibly hard to remember what video came just a few scrolls above your current one: you’re not detaching enough to consciously process what’s happening.

There is a third mode of perception that falls somewhere between umsicht and flânerie. Let yourself experience videos normally, and be drawn into what feels natural. You’ll eventually hit a moment of pause, and this is your chance to detach. These moments typically manifest through dead ends: when you stop to save a video or when you click on a creator’s profile; when you reach the end of a blue hyperlink rabbit hole and need to go back. These are points of hesitancy, and you can use them to your advantage.

Since your typical umsicht is now temporarily disrupted, seize the opportunity. Ask yourself: “why am I here?” “how did I get here?” Wait until you have an answer to the question, and only then allow yourself to re-absorb into the flow state.

This third mode is inspired by another theory of walking: the dérive, a type of unplanned journey formulated by the Situationist philosophers in reaction to the overstimulation of media and spectacle. By allowing you to intuitively “feel out” an urban environment, dérive lets you interact, but from a state of observation. You still dissociate into umsicht, but you take note of disruptions. Over time, you can train yourself to both experience and learn from that experience.

Guy Debord’s depiction of his dérive through Paris

Umsicht by itself is the most dangerous thing you can do on social media. It allows you to slip into an “algorithmic gaze,” opening you up to manipulation by platforms or advertisers. But interaction on social media is also important to better understand and respond to our current cultural moment.

The solution is to radically build up your awareness through the very way you perceive the scroll state. Let yourself engage, but not fall victim. Feel, detach, learn, repeat. It’s going to be work, but it’s how we start reclaiming power for ourselves.

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Some news: I wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times! It’s paywalled, but if you have a subscription, you can read my analysis of the “engagement treadmill” here. I also have a few in-person events coming up:

• September 22 @ 7 pm: conversation with Justin Gregg for the launch of his book Humanish, in NYC (tickets here)

• September 27 @ 12-1 pm: book signing at the Strand bookstore, NYC

• October 25 @ 1:30 pm: panel with Steven Pinker and Allison Wood Brooks at the Boston Book Festival in Copley Square, Boston

As always, if you like my writing, please consider buying my book here! Thank you :)