The Socials

I’ve taken a bit of a break from social media this year. The goal of this intentional partially dark period was to see if i could bring more focus to my psyche. I found I fluttered often, had unhealthy FOMO, and a strong desire to improve my ability to stick to tasks, and to encourage more flourishing and innovation of ideas.

The hiatus was inspired by my good friend Colin who has done similar in the past, and is doing similar now (but for much longer). I planned to take 2 weeks off (with some written asterisks), and now that i’m here I’m reflecting upon what i’ve learned from this brief hiatus.

The first thing that struck me was how ingrained the desire to elevate my own experiences was, primarily to complete the social feedback loop — i.e. do something cool, share it, get feedback that it is cool. This struck me within days of the exercise, and now i’ve come to terms with it. This in itself, is not a bad thing, but i’m grateful for understanding it further. This in fact is one of the great things about social media — it connects us to others, and we can get feedback on the things we do, we can learn, and we can become “more fulfilled/wise” or simply happier.

Where it becomes dangerous is when that becomes a strong need, and a principal method for personal validation, the primary fuel of our own self confidence. The social media feedback channel is not natural, it is quite nuanced, and I believe must pass through many intellectual filters to realize the full value of the feedback. “Likes are free” i always say, but as we know, when something takes little effort to produce, the value is limited as well. Furthermore, when the absence of this seemingly “free commodity” begins to itch deeply upon our reflections of ourselves, there is great danger in that — what i mean by this, is if you’ve ever found yourself on a “like creep” and reacted similarly to “why didn’t Fred/Fran/Phil like post XYZ, WTF???” that is a problem. We are more than the sum of the likes we receive, and we can give more back to each other than free likes (or the absence of). Deriving a negative emotional reaction when the nuance of the stimuli (or absence of!) piles higher than we could ever decipher, is folly.

After a week or so the dust settled, and the desire to post faded as a factor in decision making. This is a good thing.

The next thing i realized was the greatly diminished FOMO. Feed scrolling begets FOMO like nothing else, and it can either encourage you to do things, or make you internally wallow like you should be doing more. Again, not necessarily a bad thing as you can be exposed to experiences that enrich your life. The dark side is when it digs into your self confidence, invokes excessive comparison, and you then feel missing out is somehow making you a less interesting, desirable, whole person. My hiatus has given me a renewed focus on the things i value, and now I feel I have this experience to ensure i’m placing my energy and conclusions accordingly. More awareness of my personal value filters doing their thing as I let the stream data flow through, as opposed to a schizophrenic “must do all the things” attitude. This is a good thing.

The other part of FOMO isn’t what i consume, but what i give out. I’m more conscious now about how my behaviour might be inducing FOMO, and if that is a good thing or not. I’m not going to change radically, but i’d like to do less of “see this rad thing i’m doing” and more of “here is a thing, and here is what i think about it”. Or perhaps “here is a thing, please draw your own conclusions about this thing, but don’t draw conclusions about yourself relative to this thing”.

I like social media because it has the potential to create and grow connections to other humans, and to enhance our awareness of the world around us. Ultimately it has the power to improve my contributions to and the value I get from the world. I now hope to easily reflect on a statement like this, and anytime i’m using it and this is not occurring, I feel i’ve got a bit more wisdom to change my behaviour accordingly.

Will it last? We’ll see!!

And yes, i recognize the irony of me posting this on a site that also begets likes and feedback — and i’m totally ok with it :)