Happy New Year, Loners,
A year ago, I made the pledge to leave social media. An experiment of sorts—but mostly just a break. A much needed one. Over the last six years Sara and I have released a lot: books, TV, music. All of it demanded an extreme number of posts.
It’s funny because even before social media or YouTube, Sara and I were already chronicling ourselves—our friends, our lives, our music. In high school we captured all of it on cassette tapes and MiniDV. I learned to edit both in Broadcasting and Communications and, for a hot minute, thought maybe I’d be a documentarian.
Music took off in 1998, and Sara and I ventured out into the world—mostly alone—and documenting became a way to show our family and friends what we’d been doing when we got home. Soon we were spending large sums to host videos on our website, and talking our record label into releasing live albums and DVDs that included our home videos from the road to show our fans!
Then Myspace came along in 2004. We had to be strong-armed into participating, and even now I’d say we never really drank the Kool-Aid over there. But it was undeniable: the more listens and plays we got, the more radio we got. The more radio we got, the more the label invested in marketing. And something else happened—people started buying our albums, buying tickets to our shows, and we finally started making a living doing what we were doing. It was nearly seven years into our career, but the internet was helping.
After that we embraced social media because it allowed us to circumvent traditional media—which had ignored us, and often kind of gotten us wrong—and we liked talking directly to our fans through our posts. But like everything good, social media soon felt corrupt, capitalized, taken over by ads and strangers and, eventually, the algorithm.
Mark Zuckerberg himself said last year that Facebook isn’t really about connecting you with friends anymore. That captured something I’d felt for a long time—our social media wasn’t really about connecting with our fans anymore either. It felt more and more like we were being pushed to go viral, to find new fans, to get likes and attention in whatever way we could. By 2024, the compulsion to manufacture controversy just to stand out in the onslaught of content created by everyone was overwhelming, and truly exhausting. I didn’t want to play along.
Meanwhile—starting in 2008 with Prop 8—for nearly fifteen years, we weren’t just growing our band, releasing music, touring the world. We were also becoming spokespeople for LGBTQ+ issues. And with that came the pressure to speak out about everything else—politics, elections, war, famine, genocide, all marginalized people, rescue dogs, books we loved, hair products! We—anyone with a working internet connection or smartphone—were expected to be pundits, talking heads, experts, and salespeople. And we were all selling to each other.
Sara started calling social media the Home Shopping Network. Whether people were selling a guacamole recipe or a new single, it felt like everyone was trying not just to be famous, but to make a living online. And why not? The last decade we’ve watched people become unbelievably wealthy for doing things we all do all the time—put on make-up, clean our bathrooms, gossip about celebrities. It all looked so easy. (It’s not.)
Though I knew what I was selling, as an artist I was becoming more and more unclear—even after having been a content creator for twenty years—about what exactly I was supposed to be making content about when we released new music. Certainly not about the music we were releasing—those posts were duds.
Sara and I had been going non-stop for two decades. Not just dropping records every few years anymore, but layering in retrospectives, graphic novels, books, TV, documentaries, tours, and opinions in between. Create, create, create. And those creations need posts to sell them. Sell, sell, sell.
Even if you’re at home with nothing to sell, find something to sell! Your birthday! Your album from ten years ago! Your dog!
There was no off-season.
But I needed an off-season. Badly.
It occurred to me at the end of 2024, that we had nothing to sell in 2025. It was a making year, not a marketing year (gross). So, I vowed to stay off social media. I wouldn’t post. I wouldn’t scroll. I wouldn’t even look at the content people texted me. For a whole year. And I did it! It’s been one year!
I won’t bore you with a list of all the ways being off social media changed my life. I won’t belabour my experience. I can only take you to the parking lot at the trailhead—you have to walk the path yourself if you want to. I’ll just say this: it was 100% positive.
I shopped less, spent less, I read more, and I felt calmer, happier, more focused, and more aware of what was actually going on inside me. I looked around at the world and saw things I would have missed if I’d been on my phone. I started to think about my phone less, touch it less, forget it for hours every day. My social circle shrank (in a good way), I leaned into my actual friends, and experienced the joy of hearing about them/their lives and sharing about myself/my life directly, as opposed to on social media.
The noise, the worry, the constant contrasting and comparing, the competitiveness—it all evaporated.
I have no doubt it was terrible for our band’s algorithm (Sorry Sara). I have no doubt I missed stuff (good and bad). I will not lie to you and say there weren’t times when I was tempted beyond measure to sneak a look or that I worried about missing out on things. But if that is the con list for quitting, well, I’ll take it.
So, all this to say, I’m committed to taking another year off social media, with one addendum. If we release something—be it music, or something else—I will of course create content and have my management or Sara post it. I will use Substack from time to time. But I will not download social media or use it in 2026.
And typing that feels incredible.
The temptation to wrap up this post by telling you about the places I visited, the books I read, the music I loved, the adventures I got up to, how Georgia is (she’s great)—is high. But I won’t. One of the biggest gifts of 2025 was realizing I didn’t need to build a wall around myself to have privacy. It’s as simple as stopping the flow of information on the internet.
Instead, I’ll just tell you this: I spent most of this year making things.
When Sara and I wrapped up in 2024, I was exhausted, and I am no longer that. I wasn’t sure we’d ever tour again, but we will. I wasn’t sure the world needed more T&S. And maybe it doesn’t. But we are making things, and however, and whenever it comes out, I hope you’ll be there to receive it. But another thing I learned this past year is that it doesn’t matter if anything we make ever gets released, because making it is where I derive almost all the pleasure I get from being creative.
What a relief to finally learn that at 45!!!!
Wishing you the 2026 you want,
Tegan
