At this stage in my adult life, a large portion of the friends that I regularly socialize with are ones that I met through social media via our mutual interests and vocations surrounding wine, spirits, cocktails, food, and music. We’d traded enough digital smoke signals back and forth that at some point—either because we arranged get-togethers on purpose, or we met at work events—we’ve become pals in real life too. 

It’s somewhat rare these days to have a friend who doesn’t bother with any of the internet-based communication platforms at all. I recently spent the better part of the day and evening with one of mine, and given the exhausting, constant deluge of the political cycle and an impending heatwave, the timing of our social media-free hang could not have been better. 

I didn’t appreciate just how badly I needed to step off the information superhighway until I was on the slower back roads.