This is part 3 of my Things I learned by 50 series.
Pongwe, Zanzibar
- Don’t go on social media on “special” days like Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc. Trust me.
- Be generous with liking your friends’ posts; it doesn’t cost you a thing to like someone’s post but it does mean that they see that you’ve seen their posts.
- In the same vein, do leave comments, not only on friends’ posts but on anyone’s posts. I try to be generous and giving with comments if I have time and I know that it certainly brightens up authors’ days (they have sent me DMs to indicate same).
- Contribute first and then consume. You will feel better by contributing to the conversation or beauty of a platform before simply scrolling.
- Give yourself a daily (healthy) limit. I have a limit which I often break but at least I know that I’m then intentionally breaking my limit. This is easy to set up if you have an iphone.
- If you’re zoning out on a particular platform, ask yourself, “what am I avoiding?” It could be an easy answer like “doing the laundry” but it could also be enlightening like “I’m avoiding having a difficult conversaion” or “I’m procrastinating on x piece of work because of y”.
- Post about things that delight you, not what looks good on your grid (unless this is truly sparking joy for you). I’d started to feel at the end of last year that I should only post certain types of content and I made a goal to post delightful things to me this year. My version of delight is probably different to yours, and that’s okay. Sometimes you might need to take a complete break for awhile if the whole thing feels draining and no longer brings you joy.
- Remember that you can’t see or hear tone or body language on social media; hold everything loosely and don’t read into things that may not be there.
- Some people are really just living their lives; they are not posting AT you, they are just posting. This can feel hard when, for example, you see groups of friends having fun and you feel disconnected and lonely, or if you see people on beautiful holidays to Europe when you can’t even take a driving holiday two hours away. See 7 above – perhaps take a break for a week and see how you feel when you come back.
- Always assume positive intent. Look, there are people whose sole mission in life is to stir but this is not most people. Block or mute those people if you’re not ableto handle it. Then you can assume positive intent for the rest.
- Bonus – Does this content spark joy? You control your algorithm. If you don’t want to see gossip and strife, stop reading those posts and engaging with them (liking/ commenting/ sharing). My one account (organisingqueen) is very carefully curated to only be about organising, time management, goals, homes and reasonable tips. If I see other things creeping in, I become hyper aware and unfollow/ mark as “irrelevant”, etc. My marcia0608 account is a mishmash of friends, travel, gorgeous photography and should be pure delight. I mute or unfollow accounts if the content feels like it’s not meeting what I want that account to be.
Which learnings can you add regarding social media? I would love to know!
All three of these photos were taken within seconds of one another with slightly different perspectives
