But in a world where social currency is in part based on your willingness to like, share, and retweet your friends’ content, his inactivity was perceived by some as a snub. I was just like thinking in my head, what was the last thing David posted?’”įor David, staying away from social media simply meant keeping a clear head and using other tools to stay in contact with the people in his life. “When I told them that I wasn’t on social media, they’d be like: ‘Oh. “I went to visit San Francisco and I ran into people, and I could literally see them doing that with their minds, pulling up that Instagram Rolodex of my activity,” recalls David. Desperate to strike up a conversation, she uses technology implanted into her retina to scroll through their online activity to find something to talk about - ultimately landing on a pet cat. He references a scene from the “Black Mirror” episode “Nosedive,” where the main character played by Bryce Dallas Howard takes the elevator with an ex-coworker. To make sure his friendships didn’t suffer, David was more assertive in calling and texting them, and making sure he was still part of their lives.īut when it came to people he wasn’t as close to, the reaction to his prolonged absence taught him a lot about how many of us now use social media as a substitute for actual interaction. So what happens when one of your friends goes ‘off-grid’? The numbers aren’t much lower for people between 30 and 49 - 84 percent and 33 percent, respectively. According to the data, 88 percent of people between 18 and 29 use Facebook, and almost 60 percent of that age group have Instagram accounts, too. The vast majority of Americans who have access to the internet rely, at least to some extent, on social media to keep tabs on their friends and acquaintances. So he decided for two weeks he was going to focus on the here and now, to communicate in what much of his generation would describe as the old-fashioned way: calling and texting.

That was not an experience he intended to repeat. I was just getting really bummed out.” Missing home, he soon moved back to San Francisco. He was 25 and Facebook was in its heyday: “I would just come home from work, get on Facebook, and see what all my friends were doing. I wanted to just really be present in New York and not thinking about: What’s going on in San Francisco? Or, Am I missing out on anything?”ĭavid had tried moving permanently to New York once, in 2008. “I quit my job, came here, and started interviewing. Now in New York, he wanted to find something more creative and more challenging, a role that would make a mark on the fashion industry. Back when he lived in San Francisco, he’d had a comfortable but unfulfilling job in retail. It feels great to be so present, and not just on my phone.’”ĭavid originally decided to take a digital retreat to meet new people and properly acclimatize to his new home in New York. “And as I got closer to the end date, I just was like: ‘ Wow. When David Mohammadi decided to take a two-week break from social media, he never imagined that he’d stay logged off for over an entire year.īut for 65 weeks between 20, he was completely beyond the reach of Facebook notifications, Twitter mentions, and Instagram stories.

Wow those who remain