"Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful"
About this Quote
The intent isn’t really to shame sharing; it’s to reassert agency. “Instead of” turns social networking from a force that happens to you into a tool you can point. Norton’s subtext is about opportunity cost: attention is finite, platforms are engineered to capture it, and a thousand tiny disclosures add up to a life spent narrating itself rather than living or acting. “Meaningful” stays conveniently undefined, which is part of the rhetoric. It invites the listener to project their own higher purpose - activism, art, organizing, mutual aid - while quietly implying that the default mode is waste.
Context matters: coming from an actor, the line also reads as self-aware brand critique. Celebrities helped normalize the intimate, constant feed; they’re both beneficiaries and casualties of the demand for access. Norton positions himself as the grown-up in the room, advocating for social media as leverage rather than lifestyle. It’s a tidy piece of cultural boundary-setting: don’t confuse visibility with value, and don’t let the platform’s smallest prompts dictate what you consider worth saying.
Quote Details
| Topic | Internet |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Norton, Edward. (2026, January 25). Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/instead-of-telling-the-world-what-youre-eating-184325/
Chicago Style
Norton, Edward. "Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful." FixQuotes. January 25, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/instead-of-telling-the-world-what-youre-eating-184325/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful." FixQuotes, 25 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/instead-of-telling-the-world-what-youre-eating-184325/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.
