Book Review: Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

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“Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” by Jaron Lanier is a great book to read if you’re fascinated by technology and social media. It’s an even greater read if you’re considering taking a social media break.

Furthermore, if you want to know my own take and my in-depth summary of this book, you can read this post here from my educational blog. It talks about the 6 Big Mental Health Reasons to Take A Social Media Break using Lanier’s ideas.

“Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” is a self-explanatory title. Using research, citing his sources, and offering his personal experiences, Jaron Lanier goes through in the most helpful, informative, and humane way his 10 arguments as to why you should delete your social media accounts.

I absolutely loved this short but informative book! (I definitely loved the cat analogy. We all should definitely be more like cats: still remain in charge, have integrity, and not have their behaviours modified and predicted by exterior forces (e.g., big tech companies, algorithms, etc.).)

As someone who’s consistently on and off social media; this book really resonated with me. For a long time, I thought I was crazy – a little bit intense – when I told others that my addiction to social media (especially Instagram) was making me miserable and that my OCD (consistent checking, scrolling, obsessing, number checking, consuming, etc.) had become unmanageable. To the point of having panic attacks and crippling social anxiety. 

This book has helped me work through some of the beliefs I had held as well as it helped me work through my many assumptions, fears, and emotions concerning social media accounts and the way they operate – the BUMMER machine “Behaviours of Users Modified and Made into an Empire for Rent” as explained by Jaron Lanier.

I do believe everyone should read this short little book even if they do decide they want to maintain a social media platform. We need further awareness, resources, and studies, concerning the emotional, financial, mental, and inhumane consequences of social media.

“Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward.”

“To free yourself, to be more authentic, to be less addicted, to be less manipulated, to be less paranoid … for all these marvelous reasons, delete your accounts.” 

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