THE EMOTIONAL COST OF SOCIAL MEDIA NONSENSE
/The Emotional Cost of Social Media Nonsense
By: Meredith Atwood
Why are we even doing social media? For me, I love seeing the kittens and babies and sports antics. But that’s about it. Social media, as we all know by now, has an exceptionally dark side. It ranges from hate to sheer cowardice and vitriol. Invisible people will spew words from their phones and computers but not from their mouths. They’d never say this stuff to your face. I have a series of questions (that I ask myself) when it comes to deciding whether to engage, comment or post on social media. This is not for my audience. This is for me.
My current engagement on social media is 100 percent purposeful. I try to put out content or updates, but I rarely post comments or “status updates.” I will say positive things (“Happy birthday” and, “Your baby is the cutest thing ever”), but you will not find me fighting people on social media anymore, or posting things for mere reactions. I simply won’t do it. Of course, there are always a few exceptions. Sometimes the fights are not nonsense. Sometimes you should fight. But learning to find the line is important. I no longer post anything when the goal is to try to make someone else look stupid. I have learned my lessons several times over the recent years. I hold my posts, my typing fingers, and my comments to a new standard, and the greatest gift? It has made me so much happier. If you don’t do it for anyone else, do it for your own sanity. That is the takeaway.
I ask these questions now before posting or commenting on social media:
• Is this post helpful to someone?
• Am I making someone else feel better with it (or just myself)?
• Is it, at a minimum, entertaining in some way?
• Even if entertaining, who might this hurt?
• Am I being respectful, even if I disagree?
• What are the repercussions of this post, comment or statement?
• Is this “share” actually true or from a credible source?
• If I post this, will I waste an ungodly amount of time responding to comments about it?
The last one is my guiding light. Even if I feel something with everything I have, if dealing with my opinion being out there will waste my time, I don’t post. Time is valuable, and I am not in the business of wasting mine. Even if something is true, maybe (just maybe) we don’t need to speak it on social media. If we will lose true friends or loyal followers (who mean something to us), then we should think twice.
Now, I don’t believe every post should be some massive value-added proposition. Nothing is more annoying than people trying to post something “huge” and “valuable” and “vulnerable” each time. Vulnerable and honest is awesome—but we can go crazy with that, also. It’s important to remember that social media can be funny, silly, and whimsical as well as valuable. Finding that line, however, is tough—and sometimes we just don’t know where we fall. We do, however, learn as we go.
Under some circumstances, we can’t ask these questions because the stakes are too high. Maybe someone caused a ruckus about one of our children. Maybe it’s about a cause that matters. That’s when we find the need to stand up for ourselves—because our reputation, the truth, or something bigger might be on the line. Many people (especially on the topic of politics) use this “pen is mightier than the sword” tactic in everything they touch online. In reality, your presence on social media should aim to reflect some sort of mental stability and sanity—and heck, maybe even some manners. If we are one of those people constantly flying off the handle, we’re only making our own lives especially difficult, and everyone around us likely thinks we are in need of a psych evaluation. Unless the fire is blazing out of control and your entire life is being destroyed, take a few minutes and consider the response before you post it. I often write a response in the “notes” app on my phone. I think about it. I ask the questions above. And if I feel good about it, then I post. Finally, I learned to turn off my notifications—unless they pertain to a program I am running, my clients, or something of a more urgent nature. You will be beaten with notifications if you don’t turn a filter on these. Choose carefully what hits you. Make sure you are the ruler of your social media time—that you choose when and how you see things.
By asking a few simple questions before our fingers start flying, we can save ourselves a lot of trouble. So what is nonsense on social media? That’s up to you. But I am certain that spending hours in a given day defending, responding, and reading responses to something you wrote—that perhaps should have been left off social media to begin with—is a giant waste of time. Wasting time is nonsense. This is the #YearOfNoNonsense. Translation: We’ve got better things to do.
