Halloween is here, and candy is luring kids and grown-ups alike with its sweet siren song. It's everywhere: desks, doorsteps, break rooms. Resistance? Futile. And yet, as you reach for a shiny wrapper from that overflowing bowl, the inevitable sugar crash lurking just beyond the buzz never quite crosses your mind.
No, this isn't a takedown of Big Sugar. I'm not that bold. In fact, I had a bowl of chocolates front and center at my booth at the 2025 Boston Book Festival last Saturday. Guilty as charged. But I do want to borrow a candy metaphor to talk about a very real battle that our app is stepping into with a purpose.
The metaphor is this: "free" social media is to being social what candy is to food.
Social media didn't start as the digital beast it is today. It was charming, even innocent. AOL Instant Messenger allowed you to chat with close friends before the text message made it obsolete. Facebook felt like a reunion tour, helping you rediscover long-lost friends and forge new connections. And Twitter? Just a quirky megaphone to shout your random thoughts into the void, no strings attached. It was all fun and fleeting until the platforms grew up, their influence ballooned, and the greedy bastards took over.
I'm not here to bash capitalism or give you some know-it-all regulatory plan for big tech. I've read and enjoyed Thomas Sowell's books on economics and started a tech company, so I'll stick to talking about what I know. But every new product we build or consume leaves a ripple. These ripples (externalities) don't always show up on a balance sheet, but they matter, and as individuals, it's prudent to pause and consider them.
At best, the big social media apps are aesthetic wrecking balls. Just look around: heads down, spines curled, eyes glued to glowing rectangles. We've traded eye contact for screen time, and spontaneity for scrolls. I'm not above it. With a device in my pocket chirping at me 205 times a day, I've succumbed to temptation at plenty of inopportune times. I've tried to drastically cut back myself because I've come to realize that it's a public service to be "present" to the people around you, but I still stumble.
At worst, big social media enslaves you. In fact, I think in a few years the experts will agree that social media is the new cigarette. At least cigarettes can make you look cool when you smoke them. James Dean himself wouldn't look cool scrolling X or TikTok.
In his book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt cites a survey where one in seven teenage girls said they spent over 40 hours on social media a week. That's not just scrolling, that's clocking into a full-time W2 job. That's enough time to achieve near native-level proficiency in Mandarin Chinese in a year. Haidt calls these platforms "experience blockers," and while his focus is on young people still collecting life's firsts, the truth hits adults just as hard. If you're pouring more than 10 minutes a day into your feed, unless it's your full time job, you're not just missing experiences, you're letting life pass you by in the background of your phone.
These apps aren't just built to entertain, they're engineered to hook you. They want you to think of them the moment something interesting crosses your mind: "How can I shrink this into 270 characters (or less) and wordsmith it to rack up likes on X?"
They want you to literally see life through a lens. Every moment becomes a potential post, every experience a chance to chase virality. "Hold up, this is totally Insta-worthy. I need a pic for the Gram." They want you to live for the feed.
And what dominates the feed? Sure, there're a few heartwarming stories or thoughtful insights, but rage bait is like a fly in the jar of ointment. It's not necessarily full-blown fury. It's normally just enough friction to spark a reaction. One minute you're launching a full-scale tribunal over candy corn's crimes against humanity, the next you're tangled in a conspiracy theory involving overly-trad trad bros, fierce cat ladies, declining birth rates, and a secret cabal of fertility-influencing raccoons.
It's engineered disruption: profitable for them, brain scrambling for you. Stack up a few hundred of those micro-moments a week, and your attention isn't yours anymore. It's been siphoned, fragmented, repackaged, and sold back to you as noise. Like the Fight Club guys melting liposuction fat into soap, they turn your wasted focus into something marketable.
So, what's the anti-candy social media app? Is such a thing even possible, or do the Amish have it right?
I spoke with hundreds of people at the Boston Book Festival, and the energy was electric. So many said they were hungry for an app that trades dopamine hits for real, long-form conversation and meaningful connection. Many expressed frustration with the shallow scrolls or buzz-triggered reflexes that send you diving into your social feed for the 247th time today. People said they wanted more substance. And when they discovered El Junto, a few of them downloaded the app.
Why only "a few" (so far)? Coordinating a meaningful conversation isn't easy. But neither is working out, earning a degree, or reading a challenging book. They demand focus, intention, and a little discomfort up front. And yet, many of us do those things. Why? Because they're rewarding.
Unlike the effortless scroll through whatever the algorithm serves up, these activities ask something of you up-front, but they give something back. They leave you feeling accomplished, sharper, elevated. Compare that to a marathon session on X or TikTok where you emerge glassy-eyed, like you just inhaled a bag of Skittles (the worst Halloween candy).
It's a digital sugar crash: pure stimulation, little substance. And if there is substance, it's so fragmented that it might as well be noise. Your brain's been lit up like a pinball machine, but there's no prize at the end, just a pile of empty carb macros and the creeping sense that you've been suckered out of your time.
Thanks for reading this, and consider this a personal invitation to come dine at the El Junto table. We've laid out the silverware and folded the napkins, but the steak and potatoes are the books you read, and the people you'll meet. You'll need to do your own chewing too, of course.
In her book French Ways and Their Meaning, Edith Wharton observes:
"Dining is a solemn rite to the French, because it offers the double opportunity of good eating and good talk, the two forms of aesthetic enjoyment most generally appreciated.
Everything connected with dinner-giving has an almost sacramental importance in France. The quality of the cooking comes first; but, once this is assured, the hostess' chief concern is that the quality of the talk shall match it. To attain this, the guests are as carefully chosen as boxers for a championship, their number is strictly limited, and care is taken not to invite two champions likely to talk each other down.
The French, being unable to live without good talk, are respectful of all the small observances that facilitate it…"
That's the spirit of El Junto: an app to facilitate conversations about books.
Come be social on your own terms. Start an "Impromptu" club around whatever you're reading, whether it's a classic, a thriller, or that obscure philosophy book you can't stop thinking about. Invite a few of your matches, and see where the conversation goes. You'll find someone who gets it, and you'll leave the table feeling nourished in all the right ways.
- James
President, El Junto
October 31st, 2025