It’s been over six months since starting my new social media policy and it seems like a decent time to examine how things have been going.
In true 2020 form, I decided to make a major shift in some of my habits and was immediately smacked in the head by the flying turd that is COVID and the subsequent lockdown / social distancing pupu platter of frustration. Needless to say, my pledges to cut back on Facebook didn’t weather the storm very well, and I probably spent as much time, if not a bit more, on social media.
One good thing has come of it though – I’m legitimately getting tired of the whole thing.
Scrolling through my feed the other day, I caught myself asking out loud “Do you really think anyone cares?” when reading some of the posts. Maybe that seems normal to you, and if so, I’d ask you to ponder why it is.
In my opinion, the worst thing about social media is that it’s taken the voice that the internet has given everyone and provided the opportunity to distill down everything into bite sized chunks. They don’t even have to be fully baked or full formed chunks – just whatever happens to be on our mind. The mechanism is there to throw that thought out into the void and we know there’s some kind of audience out there, trapped in the same cycle of doomscrolling that we are. Even worse, it tricks us into feeling like we’re actually doing something… when we’re not.
So, here’s my updated Social Media Policy (Version 2). I don’t plan on posting anything on Facebook more than music, the odd joke, or the occasional share of something I feel is important. If you really want to know what I think, this is probably the place to go – but you won’t get everything. I’m not feeling any need to share every single thought in my head, and in fact, sharing 4-5 of them per week feels like a stretch.
Let’s see how this goes.