Over the last few days I’ve been fasting from Facebook. Basically I deleted the app from my phone and only allow myself to look at it on my computer. It feels weird, but good. I’d mostly been scrolling mindlessly while feeding or rocking the baby, and all the intense feelings that people were posting were having an adverse effect on me as an Empath.
But as I was browsing today, I noticed that at least a dozen of my friends were contemplating cutting back on social media. Or posting articles like this one:
Which got me thinking.
If so many of us are feeling tired, stressed, or otherwise unwell because of our social media, isn’t it our responsibility to make a change? It belongs to us after all.
Like others, my change has been to cut back. Others are more drastic and choose to quit. But the more I think about it, I’m not sure that’s the best answer.
I’m also not sure that removing the people who share the posts that stress me most is the answer either. That feels a little too much like choosing teams, eeny-meeny-miney-mo, back in grade school. The Empath in me doesn’t like the idea of just removing people because we disagree, or because they bother me.
So what then? Where does that leave us? I’m not sure that I have the best answer, but this is what I’ve come up with:
I challenge you, readers, my village, to post more consciously. To post the things that you think will make for a more social media experience. I’m not saying to stay away from the negative, from the things that need changing, from the funny memes and videos, but also to post about you.
Isn’t that the reason that we got suckered into this in the first place? The promise of connection, both in your community and with others around the world?
Tell us about you. About your day. About your dreams. About your dinner, even.
The screens between us make it easy to hide behind the memes and the articles and the videos. Come out from back there and connect with me.