It’s not evil! Like any vehicle, however, it can get hijacked for doing some pretty evil things. Let us use it for the purposes that serve us, perform regular maintenance, buckle up, stay alert, and drive safely, yes?
How do I do SoMe well already?
–I’m intentional about contacts. Since the outset on Facebook, I only extend and accept ‘friendship’ with folks who are already my friends in real life, or with whom I wish to cultivate real life friendship. Dawn and I became friends on FB, and met in person when she came to Chicago to promote her book, Eat Everything, which I recommend for us all! Heatherf and I met in Shaneiaks, met in August, and plan to gather this month and in April. I met Nicole and Jay/Janet on Ozan’s Inner Circle before he dissolved it. I have yet to meet these friends in person, but we all regularly. The young people don’t use Facebook so now I’m on Insta, connecting with my gym friends–so this is how people lived when I was in residency??
–I post intentionally–most of thet time. I’m getting much better at resisting click bait and vetting sources. I share to provoke thought, love, laughter, and connection.
–I engage respectfully and with purpose. I monitor my own accounts and do not tolerate shitty comments. I avoid complex exchanges that deserve nuance.
–I learn so much! Thanks to Daughter I recognize the voices of Thomas Sanders, Strange Aeons, Miniminuteman, B Dylan Hollis, Cinema Therapy, Dropout, Hank Green, the Try Guys, and Overly Sarcastic Productions. They are all fun and educational, and like Brene Brown, Adam Grant, Simon Sinek and Daniel Pink, these creators know one another and collaborate. History, archeology, STEM, psychology, film making, LGBTQI+ awareness, and random things I never knew–it’s all here!
How could I do it better?
–Limits limits limits. This weekend I realized that I’m afraid to start eyeball reading in case I can’t put the book down and accomplish other tasks (like write my 30 blog posts). And yet (duh-HA!) that’s exactly what happens when I get on those two little apps–‘remind me again in 15 minutes’ is not a deterrent. Working on it, and maybe making progress very recently… Just think of how many more books I could read–that’s motivation!
How is Social Media already good in society?
Connection. When I graduated high school I thought I’d know only a handful of people afterward. Facebook came online between our 10 and 20 year reunions, allowing us to bypass the ‘update’ conversations and enjoy one another so much more deeply since then. Old friends, new friends, family, support and interest groups–the potential for finding and maintaining meaningful tribe and connection bends the mind. I’m so grateful for these possibilities for us all.
Information. See above on learning. When I share something sketchy, I have reliable friends to correct me. I gain exposure to perspectives and literature that I would not otherwise find on my own, such as Brad Stulberg, Gabor Mate, Ryan Holiday, Zachary Zane, and Jacob Knowles. If nothing else, I can see how others use the platforms, which is often extremely instructive.
How could it be better?
Connection. Virtual connection is not necessarily real connection. Meaningful contact over the internet requires acute and specific attention, intention, and reflection. Huh, kinda like interacting in real life, no? I submit that though the format and platform is different, we can still think of and use social media as simply a vehicle of real human relationship. It seems to have similar flaws and pitfalls as any other innately human endeavor attempted at scale… Assuming the algorithms don’t change, how can we, individually and collectively, move toward more mindful and reliably meaningful connection on the socials?
Information. Vet our sources, yes. But what if we don’t trust the conventionally trusted informants? Does this go back to the connection question? Confirmation bias may be simultaneously the most notorious and stealthy hijacker of our rational brains and subsequent interactions, online and then real life conflict turbo jet fueled by emotional click bait of overgeneralized, oversimplified, inflammatory, and embelished sound bites. Yikes. What steering wheel clubs and guardrails can we use here? Or will just tolerate a wasteland of inescapable virtual relational car wrecks all over the place?
*sigh*
So much coincident potential for benefit and risk for harm. GAAAH.
Mindfulness. Agency. What other skills need we to use this impactful tool, rather than be used by it?
Healing Through Connection 
This post has me thinking. You do SoMe so well. I wonder then about other people’s SoMe’s.
And what about the connection of space made by your SoMe for others? Aren’t we all trying to develop or at least find spaces? Perhaps yes and also no.
For, what of all the tearing down? Is that not, too, a search or cry of the pain for belonging and for finding tribe?
And isn’t it the case that it can take time to find our true tribe? And even more time to widen out to see how to exist in and then be a part of making wider containers of space secure enough to hold and sit with what is messy, what must be earned by listening, noticing, attending?
As you say elsewhere, we see how much we change by our very listening, noticing, and attending. Ever wider, we see deeper what is the same. And with that comes even better tools to listen and absorb.
What about the other direction? What about the health component and impact on the youth and on society? What tools do they have to deal with social media as it is now? And how far are we right now from their experience?
But again you are here trying to point towards a more healthy integrated use, to what could be next, perhaps even to things that may make for a better, more attuned, intergenerational overlap.
Just as in non-social media life, we navigate the institutions and structures we are given. AND while we have what is given, we still, as you indicate, here and elsewhere, can think outside the box, build bridges, or make new ways. Not just islands of humanity and worlds within worlds but ways to actually span and bridge those worlds.
One of the things you show so well is the many webs and spheres of support we can have, which can help sustain us in this sensory dense world where too much can come on so quick and where too little and people feeling alone without any or many true friends is becoming a public health crisis. And even with friends, people can feel alone in other ways. For, at root, there is a trust that comes or, perhaps I should say, that we can discover. And that I would say is a trust that may need protecting. It is the magic element of human connection.
How do we garner that element of human connection? I thank you because that’s what has been on my mind in pondering how I want to utilize Instagram when I finally decide to post in the new year. That is what intrigues me the most.
I appreciate the prompt to ponder and reflect dear friend.
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Zac, thank you so much!! This comment should be it’s own post!! I hope everybody sees it and considers it slowly and deeply. 🙏🏼💗🔥🌟
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