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Cal Newport: What Happened When an Offline Person Tried TikTok

In 2016, I went viral for telling people to quit social media. In 2024, I ignored my own advice.

The technology writer and researcher Alexandra Samuel, for example, joined me on a radio show and said, “I think it’s far more useful to ask yourself how this incredibly powerful medium can actually support you in your own personal goals.” But things changed after the 2016 election, one of many unsettling upheavals shaped in part by social media. I see a news story about a person being pushed onto subway tracks in Manhattan—swipe—a Trump video set to ominous music—swipe—“Top 15 Most Ghetto High Schools in New Jersey”—swipe—and someone making fun of a server’s accent in a restaurant. Then there’s the once popular argument that social media is an online “town square” —that a Twitter trend, a widely read Facebook post, or an Instagram meme can become a locus of collective conversation.

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