Everyday, I wake up to an orgy of anger, despair and indignation. It is not a nice way to wake up.

I ask myself why this is happening, then get distracted by an inflammatory comment. I feel compelled to respond. Come on, let’s jut dive straight into this online slugfest.

But I’m losing this fight. I’ve found out that I don’t like my friends’ political views on social media.

Some are simply ludicrous. After a spate of Church attacks, a friend from high school who is now a district court judge insisted that the president issue a decree to incarcerate all radicals.

Without due process? Hello? Does this judge not believe in the system? Has he forgotten about the separation of powers?

I don’t hold much faith in the justice system either; especially after seeing former Jakarta governor Ahok’s judicial review thrown out by a Supreme Court judge who was a former representative of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).

Where can we find justice?

In a moment of self-aggrandizing imagination, I postulate a counter-argument: The first thing the President needs to do is to clean up the judiciary.

How can a country progress without certainty of justice?

Before throwing shade at state institutions, though, let’s take a deep breath and pause. Log off, because we are being played.

“Facebook, Twitter – they’ve all been designed to make you repeatedly use them and check back in,” says Levi Felix, the CEO of Digital Detox, a tech-free wellness retreat in Northern California.

Social media has monetized human attention.

To make users more highly engaged – or enraged, as it more often seems to be the case – they have learned to exploit the emotional hot buttons of their users.

South African comedian Trevor Noah’s recent segment got it right: “Facebook cashes in on conflict,” he said.

The more outrageous a claim, the more likely it is to grab attention and be shared.

We are all ill equipped to deal with social media addiction, and some users have found extreme ways of quitting social media.

In Bengaluru, on the Monday before Idul Fitri, a 23-year-old woman and her 28-year-old husband committed suicide after they argued over Facebook addiction.

Surely there is a better way to go offline?

The growing Internet behemoths aren’t going to change their core business model anytime soon.

Facebook’s annual advertising revenue went up from US$4 billion in 2012 to almost $40 billion last year. The more time you spend online, the more money they make.

This holiday season, it is important to reconnect with friends and family on a human level: by touch. Shake hands and accept differences. Forgive.

And before your hot buttons are pushed again by some online argument, get offline!

We don’t have to quit social media completely, but we do need to remind each other to engage in real life; to switch off from online arguments and engage in dialogue, face to face.

Research suggests that online arguments rarely change opinions. Rather, online engagement has been proven to entrench preexisting opinions.

We tend to look more at the views that we like and, over time, we develop a very strong confirmation bias. Most of us will only accept news that confirms our prior opinions.

Arguing with friends who want a new president next year is as infuriating as talking to a Trump supporter.

We now have some idea of how much was spent on Facebook to sway the Brexit and US presidential elections. How much is being spent to sway our votes next year?

With the rise of professional online opinion farms and bots, do you really want to waste your time fighting trolls and bots on the Internet? They are getting paid to sway public opinion, including yours. Why feed the fire?

Let’s step out of the ring. Take baby steps. You can start by switching off the mobile data on your phone and giving yourself a clear schedule for online sharing. Come on – give your fans a chance to miss you.

Try to have a reason to go online, like sending a family photo to your grandparents in another city. And no, checking how many likes your food pics garnered in the last 5 minutes is not a good enough reason!

Here’s a revolutionary idea: switch off your smartphone for 12 hours each day. Use an alarm clock or radio clock to wake up. Imagine all that quality family time you would have, or what you could do with all that undivided attention for yourself.

After you’re well rested and you see a Facebook argument on your timeline, ask yourself: “Is this worth my time?” If it is, then read more. Learn about both sides of the argument. Discuss it with friends over coffee.

If it’s making you furious, don’t respond to it there and then! That red-face emoji is simply an invitation to Facebook to flood you with more notifications.

Think of it this way: Do you really want to send money to the Internet giants every time something gets you upset?

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