Over the years I’d struggled with knowing how best to navigate through Social media. Sometimes things got overwhelming and I’d often just abandon ship. I always thought it was a personality thing and maybe that explains part of it but of course, there’s more to it, and I think everyone should know what we’re dealing with and how to use it in ways that are more beneficial than harmful.

Social media has brought a lot of good and we must acknowledge that, but like most things, it is subject to misappropriations and unanticipated ills. I remember having this conversation about privacy and data a while back and feeling like this is just a big mess and we don’t even know the half of it; worse still, we can only do so much since the very fabric of life is constantly being weaved into a technological tapestry (unless of course, you don’t mind living in a forest, far away from civilisation 🌚 which isn’t a totally bad idea if you ask me).

So I recently watched this Netflix documentary called ‘The Social Dilemma’ and while at it, I literally kept screaming to my sister, “this is everything I’ve been talking about (and feeling)!”

and she was like “well why don’t you write about it?” and I’m like yeah!… So here we go 🙂

“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence…truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred – Feurbach

In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord defines the spectacle as “a social relation between people mediated by images”. This makes total sense in today’s society because we’re constantly being bombarded by images and texts that even though are two dimensional, are designed to elicit the same response from us as would something that happened in real-time, only that unlike real-world happenings, they are incomplete and devoid of context. We have images serving as mediators but life is much more nuanced than what we see on screen. In an almost dystopian sense, the most basic right of man to free will, choice, beliefs, and opinions are somehow being taken away slowly in exchange for some kind of “information”. So much information that we’re unable to pay proper attention. The intelligence system is designed to be predictive, personalised and polarising (see what I did with the 3 P’s :-)), so at the end of the day, most things exist as one-sided, two- dimensional illusions, never the full picture.

We’ve become increasingly fast-paced in our thoughts, not being able to slow down to consider things properly – because there’s just so many images and captions and videos to go through, unending really.

I am not an authority on mental health but I can speak from my experience. Staying too long on social media gets me nervous and a few people have told me the same… Studies have shown that spending too much time on social media can lead to feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, ‘Fear of Missing Out’, which can in turn lead to anxiety and even depression. So why does this happen? Perhaps because here we have the lives and ideas of a ton of people constantly before us (and naturally everyone puts their best foot forward 90% of the time and make you see only what they want you to see) and while all these could be inspiring, there is also the tendency for ugly emotions to set in. Also, like I said earlier, things are mostly without context. Social media elicits a lot of self-seeking and validation-seeking motives because in a way, its designed to do so (with the likes, number of views and all); these things might not be bad in themselves, but when we depend solely on the acceptance and opinions of people we barely even know, you can imagine what happens. In all honesty, I do not think humans are designed to be close to so many people at the same time as social media demands; a lot of us can literally not deal with having to handle hundreds of lives within our purview all at once, so what’s happening is almost against nature.

There is also the apparent reduction in real-life conversations and experiences. Sherry Turkle has an apt book title to describe that – ‘Alone Together’. I think that’s a profound statement – alone together. We end up missing out so much by spending hours of our days (and consequently our lives) stuck on our phones or glued to the television – this alternate version of reality. Maybe it’s all part of the experience of life, but we must not forget to seek out real experiences, we must try to balance things, and if you ask me, the scale should tilt more towards real life experiences. Spend time with the people you love because time is fleeting and do all those things you would rather do.

Surveillance capitalism, attention economy, persuasive technology, trading in human futures. These are all terms to describe the economic model behind most social media platforms. The business model employs (more like hacks and exploits) human psychology to pin people to their phones because in this case, people’s attention and engagements literally translates to income. Time is the commodity here, so it’s actually not “free”. With the notification pop ups, stories, fleets (the newest addition on twitter), refresh buttons, streaks, reward and recommendation systems…they are increasingly developing new ways to get people hooked. It almost seems evil and there are people advocating for a more ethical approach to things. But perhaps business is business and it’s up to you to find a way around it.

Now it only makes sense to argue that there are positive sides to these things and it’s not all woe and doom. But it’s tricky (not impossible) to limit ourselves to the positive aspect. You can choose to magnify the positives by focusing on them. The first step is to understand how we are being affected, to realise the nature of things and not be carried away or controlled by just anything that comes at us. And there is a lot to be aware of because there is a lot of subtlety involved.

So as opposed to what you might be thinking, I haven’t yet deleted all my social media accounts 🙂 but I’ve devised ways to manage them, which works to a large extent. I’ll suggest some of them here, perhaps you might find one or two that could be helpful.

• I turned off all notifications
• I use time limits or app freezers that allow me access the apps only when I choose to and the time limits remind me if I’m spending too much time
• Muted stories on WhatsApp so it’s not all up in my face and I can chose which story to view. Most times I also put off my “last seen” and “read receipts” (yeah, yeah, I’m one of those people 🌚)
• On instagram, I almost always avoid the homepage and stories (and if I do, I could just go down two, three pictures and that’s it), if I have to post anything or check the dm’s, I’d do that and leave
• If I have to access twitter, I do that through my browser because it’s just less convenient that way 😄
• Have an alternate space or platform for reaching out to family and friends

Find a balance that works for you and find your way around. Remember to see life, and how spectacular it is, both within and beyond the screens. Mostly beyond 😉

Do listen to this song by Simon & Garfunkel, it’s got such striking lyrics that strangley apply even though it was written in the 1960’s.