I’ve had a number of friends say they miss me on social media.  But, when I ask if they’ve read my blog, my novel or my book,of short stories, the answer is often “it’s on my list.” I can’t help but think of the essay Literature and Life by Mario Vargas Llosa.

It happens quite often, in book fairs or bookshops, that a man will come up to me with a book of mine in his hand and ask me for an autograph, saying, ‘It’s for my wife or my young daughter, or my sister, or my mother; she or they are great readers and they love literature.’ And I immediately ask: ‘And what about you, don’t you like to read?’ The answer is almost inevitably: ‘Yes, of course I like reading, but I’m very busy, you know.’ Yes, I do know, because I’ve heard this dozens of times: that man, and thousands like him, have so many important things to do, so many obligations and responsibilities in their lives that they cannot waste their precious time spending hours on end absorbed in a novel, a book of poetry or a literary essay. According to this widespread conception, literature is a dispensable activity, a pastime, no doubt lofty and useful for the cultivation of feelings and manners, an adornment for people that have plenty of time for recreation and that has to be fitted in between sports, cinema, and games of bridge or chess. But it is something that can be sacrificed without a second thought when it comes to prioritising what is really important in life. (Touchstones: Essays on Literature, Art, and Politics, Mario Vargas Llosa)

Social media rewards presence, not depth: frequency over reflection, reaction over revision. Yes, I have a blog. Yes, social media is an effective way to promote it, gather eyes, encourage feel good likes. My blog is not meant to be a stream of fragments but a shaped act. Of course I hope for readers but not an audience to be managed with a scrolling feed that tricks you to stay on it.

It’s pretty well known that social media divides us into camps, drives polarization, and encourages cults and conspiracy theories. That’s not what my blog is about.

Blogs preserve continuity. Posts can be returned to, argued with, contradicted even by my future self. Social platforms flatten time; yesterday’s thought is dead by morning.

Social media is not neutral infrastructure; it is an extraction machine. It monetizes outrage, envy, and tribal identity. Even when used “well,” it trains users to anticipate applause or punishment. Cancelling social media is a refusal to let algorithms co-author your thoughts. Social media has rewired our childhoods, rewired our brains, and rewired our democracy. It’s trapped us inside a hamster wheel of weird videos and dopamine bursts where truth and concentration is sacrificed for diversion and distraction.

Several contemporary well known authors have made the choice to limit their social media presence. Thomas Pynchon’s work is about systems of control, surveillance, and noise. Social media would be an extension of the very forces he critiques. Marilynne Robinson has been openly critical of the shallowness and speed that social media embodies. Kasuo Ishiguro has spoken about protecting the mental space needed for serious imaginative work. Don DeLillo’s novels like White Noise, Cosmopolis, and Zero K dissect media saturation. Jonathan Franzen has said that social media damages reading, thinking, and moral seriousness. J.M. Coetzee, Anne Dillard, Zadie Smith, and Dave Eggers are other contemporary authors who criticize and avoid social media.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has pointed out the mental health dangers of social media in The Anxious Generation and in a new book for young readers The Amazing Generation.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a luddite. I think modern technology properly used has the potential to provide us with amazing benefits. But, serious writing requires stretches of silence, time for unfinished ideas to marinate. Social media collapses that incubation period. It doesn’t allow for time to think historically, philosophically, or narratively.

My blog is meant to function more like a personal archive than a stage. It allows for long arcs of thought, recurring themes, contradictions without public pile-ons, and readers who arrive by choice, not accident. It allows for ideas to actually develop.

Social media provides a broad signal. Withdrawal means some potential readers may be lost. The trade-off is clarity: fewer readers who read carefully rather than more readers who skim and vanish, writing that is cumulative and reflective rather than viral. For someone who cares more about meaning than momentum, who prefers to be read slowly rather than shared quickly, who values intellectual sovereignty over reach, the trade-off is worthwhile. Or so I think.

Will future literature require a refusal to engage with social media or will the two merge into something new and interesting? That remains to be seen. For me, for now, I’m enjoying a respite from the frantic, ubiquitous, mesmerizing hyperspace of social media platforms.