More Memories of Other People's Lives Than Our Own [Summer Read-Aloud]

More Memories of Other People's Lives Than Our Own [Summer Read-Aloud]

July 13, 2026 · 11 min

About this episode

Sam Vander Wielen discusses the challenges of stepping away from social media and the impact of personal loss on her life and business.

Everyone's obsessed with the getting off social media part — deleting the apps, doing the digital detox, bragging about their screen time going down. But almost no one talks about what's supposed to happen once you actually log off. Because here's the thing: stepping away from Instagram only to fall into a Substack doom scroll isn't really progress. It's just a softer-feeling version of the same problem. In this episode, I'm doing something a little different to celebrate summer — I'm reading you one of my recent essays straight from my free Substack, where I get real about what it's actually like to run a seven-figure business while also trying to build a life off the very apps I used to build it. This particular essay gets into something I don't talk about all that often: how losing both of my parents within a year of each other completely cracked open the way I think about time, attention, and what I actually want my life to look like — phone down or not. In this episode, you'll hear… Why getting offline isn't just about swapping one app for a "better" one The unsettling stat about our generation and other people's memories that I can't stop thinking about How losing both of…

People in this episode

Host: Sam Vander Wielen

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Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Substack

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