By A friend and I were having a conversation on Friday night. Asking for my perspective on the way we interact as people in the age of social media, I started asking him questions to understand what he was asking. As we kept talking, he told me he’d be interested in reading my take in a blog post. Off the top of my head, I said I didn’t know how to write what he was asking. Honestly, writing about whatever I feel led to write about is easier for me than taking suggestions. I told him to let me think about how to write it.
My friend said it’s hard to read people’s reactions in the age of social media. His basic question was how we interact well in the age of social media and so much screen time for all of us. For a few days I had no clue how to approach writing what my friend was curious about. Then all the headlines about Facebook and all its family of social media platforms came out. If you don’t know what I’m referencing here’s an article to get up to speed (https://www.engadget.com/whats-in-the-facebook-papers-and-what-it-means-for-the-company-194502237.html). Those headlines were the springboard for answering my friend.
What do I mean? The headlines made me want to recalibrate my relationship with Facebook again. I consider this part of the way I show myself care. Recalibration means scaling back my Facebook usage again. At the end of 2018, I took a hiatus from Facebook which lasted until September 28, 2019: the day I launched this blog. I really loved the hiatus because I really liked my life being private. With starting the blog, a hiatus wasn’t possible anymore, but I could certainly use it differently.
On my personal timeline I decided to only share positive posts. No politics or controversial issue discussions. This way I don’t argue with anyone. In addition, on my personal timeline, unfollow and unfriend as needed. My peace is too valuable. All of that still applies still applies to this reset, but I want to use Facebook even less now. The blog’s growth makes that easy to accomplish because I have lots of work to do daily. Also, I don’t have any personal social media other than Facebook. The accounts I run on other platforms are just for the blog. Now, I find myself only sharing pictures and blog posts with my family and friends. I prefer texts, phone calls, and Facetime to time spent on social media in my free time these days. All of these allow me to pick up quickly on how the people I love feel on any given day. I hope these tips help you all to have a better relationship with social media and answers the question of my friend.
