Social Media

 

I have seen a great deal of worry about social media, Face Book, and other platforms in the last month, with the new administration’s election. In fact, the concern goes back further in time, as I just finished reading The Anxious Generation, which connects our mental health crisis directly to the rise of cell phone. I agreed with the author’s premise the smart phones are not good for our mental health; we do not have smart phones at home and still answer (or not) a landline.  Obviously, we are not a technology free household but we have some limits that help to keep us sane.

First, all of our engagement with anything online is through our shared laptop. Mark has a computer, but it is in the basement and its cold down there. So we negotiate for my laptop upstairs.  I use it when I come home from work because I have council business to deal with. Mark works on his stuff while I cook dinner. If one of us has an online meeting, we have to arrange ahead of time. It’s like having only one car (we have one car, too).  Because we are not always online, we have a break. There’s not a constant pinging in our lives.

Second, I have curated my Face Book account.  After the first Trump election, I deleted everything political. I unliked all of my news sources and political pages. It was amazing. This left me with a whole lot of potato sellers and garden seeds, which is lovely. And it has held. I have no political junk cluttering up the feed. I do have underwear ads (the nice socks have disappeared) and some photos of Boston in the 1970s, but I can live with that. I post nothing political.  It helps.

Finally, every Friday evening, I shut down the computer for a technology Shabbat.  No email. No New York Times—not even the games. No checking social media. No packet questions, or printing. The laptop is closed. Mark usually participates as well, but he is not bound by it. If you want to reach me, you have to call. Or catch us on the way to the market. Or stop by with a question.  It’s all good.

I have found that having these limits keeps me sane and rooted in the real world. I have control of my online life—we all do. We just need to take it back.  And it’s Friday, so it is time to make dinner, read my book, maybe draw the garden plan, stretch my eyes away from a screen, and have a real life. In this, as in so many other ways, we have agency.