Let's Live Life, Not Perform It

The joy of not turning life into a photo shoot

About six months ago, I visited Puerto Rico with my family, and rediscovered that fundamentally, I am not a beach person.

As you may already know, beaches are often sunny, salty, and sandy—three characteristics that I do not typically enjoy.

Technically, I knew this, too. And yet despite my beach phobia, I’d arrived in Puerto Rico really looking forward to our daughter’s first snorkeling trip—I’m willing to endure salt water if it means I get to see a clown fish. But from the moment we dipped our heads into the water near our Air BNB, I knew something was wrong. Instead of seeing a colorful world of coral with schools of fish, everything was brown and dead, with only a few solitary fish weaving their way between blades of dead sea grass.

It was extremely upsetting, and I have subsequently learned that the reefs in the Caribbean are in a state of crisis due to some mysterious disease, no doubt helped by the increasingly warm water temperature, that is killing the coral.¹

At that point, though, I didn’t know that it was a broader issue, and I thought that perhaps this was just happening in the shallow waters outside our Air BNB. So I did what any rational person would do and, instead of doing a google search to see if it was a broader problem, I pulled out my credit card and booked a snorkeling trip.

There were, in retrospect, many questionable things about this decision. See, for example, my comment above about how I don’t like the sun or salt water. I also do not like being trapped on a boat with a bunch of scantily clad people drinking cheap pina coladas out of plastic cups while being subjected to blasting renditions of “party anthems” such as Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite” or “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO. (This was particularly disappointing because I had somehow convinced myself that this particular boat company—unlike every single other boat company in the area—was not going to serve cheap pina coladas and blast LMFAO.)²

The resulting afternoon was not only deeply unenjoyable, but it also resulted in me witnessing a scene that was so absurd that I feel compelled to share with you, because I think it exemplifies why I think it’s so important for us to be considering the effects that our relationships with our smartphones—and, more specifically, social media—are having on us, as individuals and as a society.

It’s also a story that makes me look old and grumpy. So just know that I know that.

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Here is the scene: I had retreated from the water after another failed attempt to see clown fish and was lying on the ship’s deck, covered head-to-toe in sunscreen and sun-protective clothing (I think I may actually have returned home paler than I was when we left). It was then, as I was staring glumly off toward the horizon, thinking about the dead coral (but not getting skin cancer!), that I was treated to a different sort of apocalyptic nature show: a group of young women filming each other climbing into the boat, again and again and again, making videos to post to social media.

One woman in particular captivated me. She stood at the base of the boat’s stairs and, after confirming that her friend had begun to film, held onto the stair railing and dunked herself under the water so that the camera could catch her popping out, back arched, hair streaming down her back. Then, wet and glistening, she smiled seductively at the camera as she climbed the stairs with an exaggerated hip sway, glancing first to the right and then to the left, as if she were Aphrodite emerging from the sea.

It was quite cinematic, and I would imagine it only looked better once it had been set to music, subjected to a few beautifying filters, and put into slow motion. The only problem was that dipping her head into the ocean and then turning side to side was causing salt water to drip down her forehead and into her eyes. (See? SALT WATER.) And so I watched as every time she did her sexy-sea-goddess-water-emergence act (which I witnessed at least five times), she would maintain the coy smile JUST until her friend stopped recording, and then would grimace, very unsexily, as she wiped the salt water out of her eyes with the back of her hand and hunched over the phone to watch the video of herself, before repeating the entire performance to get a better shot.

I did not see her or her friends swim or snorkel (though I guess why bother; there was no coral to see); instead, after they had adequate footage of themselves getting into (and diving off of) the boat, they spent the rest of the trip drinking pina coladas and sunbathing on the deck while staring at their phones.

Yes, the boat was called the “Spread Eagle II.” I should have known what I was getting into.

As I sat there, embracing my role as middle-aged lady in a sunhat, feeling depressed about the made-for-social performances going on around me, I tried to pinpoint what other emotions were swirling around in my overly sensitive brain. And I realized the primary one was sadness: dead coral aside, I was witnessing the result of what happens when a generation of people are trained, via hours upon hours of exposure to social media algorithms, to perform their lives instead of live them.

It was exactly what

Freya India

wrote about in this excellent post for

After Babel

:

Your Boyfriend Isn't Your Camera Man

In it, she writes:

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with your partner taking occasional photos of you. I can see how it might make people feel more connected to each other’s lives. But I think there is something wrong, there is something worth talking about, with this compulsion to get pictures. There’s something wrong with a compulsion that can ruin the moment; with judging every experience in terms of likes, leaving it joyless, and with demanding your partner document you, over and over. Of course, we don’t all behave this way, but many—more and more of us—do. Not just girlfriends either—friends demand it of friends; family members demand it of each other; it’s happening all the time. 

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Again, I know that I may sound old and grumpy, and will admit that I once spent a full 20 minutes using the timer feature on our camera to take photographs of me and my husband jumping in the air together in front of an Icelandic waterfall. I’m aware, in other words, that sometimes staging photos can be fun.³

I cannot believe I was able to find the actual photograph!

But the purely performative, photo-shoot nature of the scene on the boat made it feel different. And what really got me was when I tore my gaze away from the mermaids and started observing my own nine-year-old daughter, dressed head-to-toe in SPF 50 clothing (she’ll thank me later?), completely oblivious to the performances going on around her.

I thought about the moment when this might change, when she might switch from living her life to performing it for Instagram. I thought of all the experiences she might never have, the things she might never notice, if she started to fixate on external validation, let alone validation delivered via social media. I thought about the freedom and self-confidence that she might lose, and all the self-criticism and self-hatred she might start to develop, from comparing herself to filtered—and fake—images presented to her on social media. It made me incredibly sad. And it also heightened my resolve to do something to prevent it.

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Which leads me to the less depressing part of this post

People are paying more attention to smartphones and social media (and their negative effects) than ever before — and things are changing fast. A couple of recent examples:

• The Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy, has called for there to be warning labels on social media apps, akin to those on cigarette packages

• The Los Angeles Unified School District became the largest school district in the country to ban phones from schools, bell to bell

• New York City (technically the largest school district in the country) is poised to do the same

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (which is about the negative effects that smartphones and social media have had on Gen Z in particular) has been at the top of the bestseller lists ever since it came out in March. (And the behind-the-scenes-momentum is incredible—I’ve begun directly collaborating with Jon and his team, and each of our team calls makes me feel inspired and hopeful for the future. Fellow parents: all is not lost!)

I truly believe that if we resolve to take collective action — now — by delaying the age at which we give our kids smartphones and social media, banning phones from schools, bell-to-bell, and reprioritizing unstructured play and fun—we can make it less likely that future generations will spend their free time turning their lives into photo shoots. (Some practical resources: here’s my choose-your-own-adventure guide to smartphone alternatives, which I recommend using if you’re thinking of getting your kid their first phone, and here’s a post I recently wrote for Jon Haidt’s After Babel Substack about how to create better screen/life balance as a family.)

I also think that we can make a difference if we commit to re-evaluating our own relationships with social media and our phones. After all, it’s not just Gen Z that has problematic relationships with social media; many of us do, too. That’s part of the reason I’m really excited about the revised version of How to Break Up With Your Phone, which will be coming out in early February (official announcement forthcoming)—it’s designed to help everyone from teenagers on up create healthier relationships wtih their smartphones.

One suggestion for now? Delete social media from your own phone for a few days. (Or use one of these apps and devices that I mentioned a couple weeks ago to create schedules for yourself.) Notice what it feels like to not spend time looking at other people’s photo shoots—and see what it feels like to not post photos to social media yourself. (You can make a personal call about how much time you want to spend jumping in front of waterfalls with your spouse.)

If you do take photos (which is fine!), take them for yourself, not for an anticipated audience, and share them with friends in person or by text, not social media. See if it feels different.

To scrolling less and living more (in maximum sun protection),

Catherine

1. The solution might be . . . sea urchins?

2. In my defense, the reason I thought this was that their website suggested that you “bring a walkman” (yes, a walkman), specifically because this company did NOT play music; instead, the site promised that the only onboard soundtrack was going to be the gentle sound of the waves lapping against the boat. I’m really the victim of false advertising here, is what I’m saying (even though I concede that the walkman mention does make it possible that the website hadn’t been updated since 1998).

3. If I’m really going to parse this out, though, I do think there’s something different about taking this type of photograph together as opposed to forcing your companion to be your camera-person (my husband and I always end up laughing together when we try to do one of these jumping-in-the-air photos)—and it also makes a difference if the goal is the photo itself (and the fun of creating it together), rather than putting it on social media to get likes.