Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 271

Life Without Social Media Part One

Who cares about the price of tea in China? This is something my father said quite frequently. He used this whenever we were concerned or focused on something that had no bearing on what was actually going on in front of us. 

Yet with the advent of the internet and especially social media, we are constantly bombarded with news feeds, friends, messages, posts, and everything else that fragments our attention and distracts us from what is going on right in front of us. Few things have influenced our culture and behavior more than the internet and social media. 

Granted, there are many advantages to our technology. However, we are only beginning to understand the detrimental affect on our culture, daily behavior and even our mental health. 

So please join me for E271 Life Without Social Media. 

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainably Living Podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E271Life Without Social Media. 

What I want to do in the next few episodes is to explore how the internet and social media have fundamentally changed our culture and our daily lives. Although I do recognize that the advent of this technology and social platforms offer many advantages, what I want to focus on is how this has altered our lives in numerous detrimental ways.  I want to explain how we can reverse this trend and how this is actually related to a sustainable lifestyle and protecting our general health. 

But before we dive into all that, let’s first talk about the good news story of the week. 

Good news story of the week

Five headlines that showcase the world’s fight against climate change. 

1. China has led the world in new solar installation. The country has shown a 30% rise in solar installations year after year. 
2. Renewable energy may beat out global warming. Last year 200 countries agreed to triple the global renewable energy capacity by the end of 2023. Such an increase is exactly what is needed to prevent any further global warming and keep us all safe. 
3. Coal use plummets in the US. The US has continued to phase out coal even in the face of a global demand that has remained steady or even increased. In 2023, global use of coal fell by 20%. 
4. Electric vehicle use continues to rise mainly due to the reduction in the cost of battery production. 
5. Southeast Asia is cleaning up their energy sector. Although southeast Asian countries are some of the largest investors in new coal projects, their wind and solar capacity increased by 20% in 2023.

So there you are folks, big business and big government are truly making progress. So a round of applause to five ways in which we are making progress in the fight against climate change.  

Now before we dive into this episode, I do want to point out that I am not against using the internet and I do not feel as if social media is the evil empire. Although it may sound like that at times. 

From a cultural and sociological point of view, the internet and social media rushed into our lives very quickly. For decades now we have been so enamored with the advantages of this technology and the convenience it produces that we have completely overlooked how it has changes our lives. 

What I want to accomplish in the next few episodes is to give you a completely different perspective. The internet, and social media have fundamentally altered human behavior and our culture in some not so good ways. But I also want to point out that mitigating the affects of all this technology and social influence is directly connected to living a sustainable and sovereign life. 

By addressing this issue I realize it is going to sound as if I am veering far off course and discussing social problems instead of focusing on sustainability. However, these two things are closely connected in more ways than you can imagine. The primary purpose of this first episode is to give you some perspective on how our health and well-being are an intricate part of living a sustainable and sovereign life. But then I want to follow that with discussing how our modern technology, and in particular social media, works against the very principles that safe guard our health. 

What most people do not realize is that a truly sustainable and sovereign life almost always includes protecting and strengthening both physical and mental health.

Without our health, our independence becomes fragile.

The reason we tend to overlook and physical and mental health is that the ideas of sustainability and sovereignty are often misunderstood as being only about:

• energy
• food production
• privacy
• finances
• or self-sufficiency.

But at a deeper level, they are about reducing unnecessary dependency and increasing personal resilience. Our health is central to those very things. So,  let’s address that issue first in order to set the stage for further, much deeper discussions on this problem.  

Physical Health Is Foundational to Sovereignty

Your body is your primary infrastructure.

If physical health deteriorates:

• energy declines
• decision-making ability worsens
• dependence on societal systems increases
• resilience decreases
• and consequently your freedom declines by an increasingly narrow margin. Marginal health means you depend on the systems of society even more. 

A sovereign lifestyle usually emphasizes:

• self-reliance
• capability or ability to tend to our own needs
• preparedness for the unexpected
• and long-term planning and resilience

Those require:

• strength
• mobility
• endurance
• proper sleep
• and metabolic health.

Historically, humans living closer to land-based or community-based lifestyles often:

• moved more, meaning they are more active 
• Ate less processed food
• Spent a lot more time outdoors,
• and had stronger integration between daily life and physical activity.

Modern life frequently separates people from:

• Physical activity
• Natural light such as sunlight
• natural rhythms of nature and our bodies
• and food awareness, meaning where our food comes from and what we are eating and why. 

A sustainable and sovereign life often attempts to reconnect those systems.

Mental Health Is Equally Important

Mental sovereignty matters just as much as physical sovereignty.

If your:

• attention
• emotions
• habits
• or beliefs

are constantly manipulated by external influences, true independence becomes far more difficult. 

Mental resilience includes:

• emotional regulation
• clarity of thought,
• focus,
• self-awareness,
• and the ability to think independently.

Many people pursuing sustainable or sovereign living eventually realize that:

overstimulation, chronic stress, consumer culture, and digital overload are health issues as much as philosophical ones.

That realization often leads people toward:

• digital minimalism
• A lifestyle with a slower pace
• intentional set routines
• Regular time in nature
• reduced consumerism and consumption
• and stronger local relationships instead of internet based friendships. 

Sustainability and Health Are Deeply Connected

Modern industrial systems often encourage behaviors that undermine health:

Food Systems

Highly processed food can contribute to:

• obesity
• diabetes
• chronic inflammation
• All of which contribute to chronic disease processes. 

Attention Economy

Digital overstimulation contributes to:

• anxiety
• poor sleep habits
• shortened attention spans
• and emotional exhaustion.

Consumer Culture

Constant consumption can create:

• stress
• unnecessary debt
• dissatisfaction with life in general
• and emotional instability.

Sedentary Living

All our modern conveniences dramatically reduces our daily physical activity.

A sustainable lifestyle often pushes in the opposite direction:

• growing food
• cooking from scratch
• walking and other forms of daily exercise
• repairing things instead of replacing
• creating things instead of buying them
• and engaging physically with life everyday. 

These behaviors tend to improve health naturally.

Mental Sovereignty Requires Attention Control

One of the most important modern realizations is:

whoever controls your attention partially controls your life. And to take that one step further, as you have likely heard me say on a regular basis, whoever controls your resources controls your life. 

A sovereign mindset often involves protecting:

• focus
• time
• emotional energy
• and cognitive independence

This does not necessarily mean rejecting technology entirely.

It means using technology intentionally rather than compulsively.

For many people this includes:

• limiting social media
• reducing algorithmic influence which goes right along with social media
• avoiding constant cycles of frustration
• and creating periods of silence, reflection and disconnection from the world

As a result our mental health improves because our nervous system is not constantly overstimulated.

Exposure to Nature Has Major Health Effects

Many sustainable lifestyles involve:

• gardening
• Working outdoors
• hiking
• farming
• homesteading
• or simply spending more time outside.

Research increasingly suggests that regular exposure to nature can improve:

• stress levels
• sleep
• mood
• concentration
• and cardiovascular health.

For most of human history we evolved in natural environments.

Modern indoor hyper-digital life is biologically unusual and counter productive. 

Community Is Part of Sustainability

Additionally, in our modern social setting where most of us do not even know our neighbors, we forget that community is also a part of sustainability. 

True sovereignty is not a life of total isolation.

Healthy sustainable living usually includes:

• trusted relationships and close friends
• local community
• mutual support from friends, family, and neighbors
• and interdependence on your community and family which is amazingly helpful in a time of need.

This sort of strong social connection improves:

• mental health
• emotional resilience
• longevity
• and life satisfaction
• And has also been directly connected to a longer life 

Modern hyper-individualized lifestyles that we have these days  creates loneliness even when people are digitally connected.

Good Health Is a Form of Resilience

A sustainable and sovereign life is often built around resilience:

• energy resilience
• financial resilience
• food resilience
• digital resilience
• emotional resilience.

Good health strengthens everyone of these. 

Someone with:

• good sleep,
• stable mental health,
• physical capability,
• and emotional discipline

can handle disruptions far better than someone living in a state of chronic exhaustion or stress and only having a group of friends that live on the internet. 

The Goal Is Not Perfection

A healthy sovereign lifestyle does not require:

• living off-grid like I do
• rejecting all technology,
• or becoming completely self-sufficient, which is almost impossible. 

It is more about:

• Living life intentionality
• reducing harmful dependency,
• and aligning your life with long-term well-being.

For many people this means:

• consuming less
• exercising more
• spending more time in nature
• Safe guarding what commands your attention,
• eating more simply
• building real relationships, not just internet friends
• and creating systems that support resilience instead of constant depletion of your time, energy, and resources. 

A Useful Way to Think About It

A sustainable and sovereign life often asks:

Physical Questions

• Does this strengthen or weaken my body long term?
• Am I becoming more resilient or more dependent?

Mental Questions

• Who and what controls my attention?
• Am I living intentionally or reactively?
• Does this technology serve me, or condition me?

Lifestyle Questions

• Is my daily life aligned with health and stability?
• Am I building capacity and capability or simply exhausting myself?

Another, and perhaps a simpler way to think about this, is to question the value of everything. Whenever you are faced with a decision, whether it is doing something, making this purchase, or making a change in my life, ask yourself if it is going to bring value into your life and align with how you want your life to be. 

The Bigger Picture

At its core, sustainable and sovereign living is not just about survival.

It is about creating a life where:

• health
• clarity
• autonomy
• resilience
• and meaning

can endure over time.

Physical and mental health are not separate from that vision.

They are central to it.

A Different Perspective on Modern Life

Now that I’ve given you a perspective on how a sustainable and sovereign life is closely connected with our physical and mental health, let’s take a little bit of a different direction. Next I want to focus on how our digital age and social media have influenced our lives in more ways that people know. 

In our modern era, several things, or forces, if you will, have profoundly shaped human culture, behavior, identity, as well as social structure. Many of these influences overlap and reinforce one another, creating the modern world people experience today. Despite all the convenience we now have because of our technology, let’s dive into how this has fundamentally altered our daily lives. 

1. The Internet and Digital Technology

The internet fundamentally changed how humans communicate, learn, shop, work, date, entertain themselves, and form identity.

Key impacts:

• Instant global communication
• Constant information access
• Attention fragmentation
• Reduced privacy. We are actually trading our privacy for easy access to information. 
• Algorithm-driven behavior modification. This happens so much more than the average person is aware
• Digital dependency
• Online identity construction

The smartphone intensified this shift by essentially making digital life continuous rather than occasional.

Major platforms such as Google, Meta, TikTok, and Apple helped create a culture built around immediacy, personalization, and constant connectivity. In the big scheme of things, this transition has happened so quickly that government oversight and regulations have never been able to keep up in order to ensure our privacy. 

2. Social Media

Social media transformed culture from:

• Local → global
• Private → performative
• Slow communication → instant reaction
• Deep personal relationships → broad networks
• Experience → documentation of experience

Influences include:

• Comparison culture. It is what I call compare and despair.
• Shortened attention spans
• Influencer culture
• Political polarization
• Viral outrage cycles
• Identity branding
• Dopamine-driven engagement systems

Social validation became quantified through likes, shares, views, and followers.

This has altered:

• Self-esteem
• Social norms
• Political discourse
• Mental health
• Consumer behavior
• Dating culture
• Youth development

3. Consumer Capitalism and Advertising

Modern economies are heavily driven by consumption. In fact, in the United States, consumer spending accounts for 70% of the US economy. 

Advertising used to be about simply informing people about products. Now it has evolved into psychologically engineered promotions that influence our desire, identity, and aspirations.

Culture increasingly became tied to:

• Material success
• Status signaling
• Brand identity
• Convenience
• Novelty
• Endless consumption

Companies learned to psychologically associate their products with:

• Freedom
• Happiness
• Beauty
• Success
• Masculinity/femininity
• Social belonging

Modern marketing now uses behavioral data and predictive algorithms to influence decision-making at unprecedented scale. And you may not believe it but this happens more than you can ever imagine. 

4. Mass Media and Entertainment

Television, film, music, streaming, and celebrity culture shape:

• Fashion
• Language
• Political narratives
• Social values
• Beauty standards
• Morality
• Lifestyle expectations

Hollywood and global entertainment industries normalized shared cultural references across nations.

Entities such as Netflix and Disney influence global storytelling and emotional narratives on a massive scale.

Entertainment increasingly became:

• Constant
• Personalized
• On-demand
• Algorithmically curated

5. Industrialization and Urbanization

The Industrial Revolution radically changed human behavior.

Humans shifted from:

• Agricultural rhythms → clock-based schedules
• Multi-generational rural communities → urban individualism where no one knows anyone
• Physical labor → specialized wage labor

This altered:

• Family structure
• Diet
• Sleep patterns
• Community bonds
• Relationship to nature
• Concepts of time and productivity

Modern work culture emerged from industrial systems emphasizing:

• Efficiency
• Standardization
• Productivity
• Economic growth

6. Globalization

Globalization interconnected economies, cultures, media, and supply chains.

Effects include:

• Cultural blending
• Loss of local traditions
• Global consumer culture
• International labor dependence
• Rapid spread of ideas and trends

A person in Colorado can now consume the same media, fashion, products, and cultural trends as someone in Tokyo or London.

This created a more interconnected world, but also:

• Increased economic dependency
• Cultural homogenization
• Fragile global supply systems

7. Scientific and Medical Advances

Modern medicine dramatically changed:

• Lifespan
• Child mortality
• Population growth
• Expectations of health and safety

Scientific progress also shifted cultural authority from:

• Tradition
• Religion
• Local wisdom

toward:

• Experts
• Institutions
• Data-driven systems

This influenced education, governance, food production, and public trust.

8. Political Ideologies and Modern Governance

Democracy, nationalism, liberalism, socialism, and modern state systems shaped collective identity and social expectations.

Major historical events like:

• World War I
• World War II
• Cold War

deeply influenced:

• Trust in institutions
• National identity
• Security culture
• Technology development
• Economic systems

9. The Attention Economy

One of the most powerful modern influences is the monetization of human attention.

Modern platforms compete to maximize:

• Screen time
• Emotional engagement
• Behavioral predictability

This has changed human behavior toward:

• Constant stimulation
• Reduced boredom tolerance
• Instant gratification
• Emotional reactivity
• Continuous scrolling
• Fragmented concentration

In many ways, attention itself became a commodity.

10. Decline of Traditional Community Structures

Historically, culture was shaped heavily by:

• Family
• Religion
• Local community
• Shared physical spaces
• Multi-generational interaction

Modern life weakened many of these structures through:

• Mobility
• Urban isolation
• Digital substitution
• Individualism
• Remote work
• Consumer lifestyles

Many people now derive identity more from:

• Online communities
• Media consumption
• Political affiliation
• Lifestyle branding

than from geographic community.

In closing, what I have attempted to accomplish in Part One of this series, is to simply give you a different perspective on our technologically and digitally drive world that now focuses more on what is online instead of what is in front of you day-to-day.

The Biggest Meta-Shift

What I have tried to point out here is that perhaps the largest cultural transformation is this:

Human life shifted from being primarily:

• Local
• Physical
• Community-centered
• Slow-moving
• Connected to the natural world

to becoming:

• Digital
• Global
• Individualized
• Consumption-driven
• Attention-driven
• Rapidly changing

This transition affects nearly every aspect of modern behavior:

• How people think
• What they value
• How they relate to others
• How they spend time
• How they define success
• How they experience meaning and identity

Many modern tensions — anxiety, loneliness, political polarization, burnout, and environmental strain — can be understood as consequences of humans adapting to these rapid cultural shifts.

So we have literally transitioned from “Who cares about the price of tea in China?” to worrying about the price of tea in China. We can not only check the price of tea in China we can order it if we want to. In other words, we no longer focus on our local community. We worry about something that’s happening on the other side of the planet. Not only that, something happening on the other side of the planet can actually affect our daily life, which in my opinion is an absurd way to manage a global economy. All this does is increase our stress and vulnerability to influences that are far beyond our control. 

The second purpose of this first episode is to point out that a sustainable and sovereign life is also directly connected to our physical and mental health. Unfortunately, the detrimental affects of our digital and social media economy are over looked far too often. 

Now that you are armed with a fresh appreciation for these two points of view, in Part Two of this series I am going to dive into all the aspects of social media and how this has fundamentally changed human culture.