What’s the hope and what’s the worry… of being on social media
This is not the first time I’ve questioned my relationship with social media, more specifically Instagram as a Meta-owned platform.
Social media has gradually been messing with my relationship with time, yours probably too. It’s a time suck; long stretches of time run through our scrolling fingers unnoticed but eventually keenly missed. Simultaneously, it destroys our attention span, making it harder to focus fully on what we care about. Frustrated with our scattered brains, we return to the bite-sized stimulation for another dopamine hit.
I don’t want my thoughts to get shortened to caption-length soundbites. I don’t want my attention span to cut out at the length of a reel. More importantly, I’m increasingly troubled by what I hear from those owning and making their fortunes on and with these social media platforms.
Given our shortened attention spans: TLDR…
I’m ready to leave Instagram because my hopes are bigger than my worries.
This may sound odd as my worry-o-meter is off the charts given the state of the world, the systems we’ve created and find impossible to opt out of. But: my hope of what is possible without the consistent hum of IG in my life makes up for the worry about losing connections. My hope of reclaiming my time and attention compensates for the seemingly convenient one-stop-shop for inspiration. Rather than scanning the posts of interesting people (if I happen to see them amongst the sponsored guff), I’ll have time to read their newsletters, blogs, and books! I’ll have time to listen to their talks and interviews. I’ll use my time and energy purposefully to shape spaces for real connection and to contribute to the spaces created by others.
The recent stance that we need more masculinity in our corporates and less fact-checking or protection of vulnerable groups in society made my skin crawl. Is this the last straw? What pushed the needle just that extra bit beyond what I’m willing to tolerate?
Over the past few days, I’ve been wondering whether Instagram has not only drained my days of time but also meaning.
A meaningful life is not necessarily an easy life.
It asks us to make difficult choices. It’s time to stop trying to convince myself that the benefits still justify the cost. The responsibility for creating a meaningful life lies with me.
I’ve listened inward to check that this isn’t my envious part hitting the keyboard; this isn’t about wanting my account to grow (which it hasn’t for a long time anyway). It’s not my angry part either, even though knowing that people are suffering from PTSD caused by content moderation without support makes me furious (among many other things).
This is written by the part of me that knows that what we focus on grows stronger.
As I’m getting flooded with attention-grabbing guff, the people I want to focus on become less visible.
My brain is wired like any old brain, so my focus gets side-tracked by content I’ve never asked for. How I connect with the people I want to focus on is now being filtered by algorithms no longer coded for connection.
This part also knows that if the people who decide who gets amplified and who speaks into the void get more sinister my focus and attention deserve extra protection.
I’ve lost what once was a place of meaningful relationships, mutual support and inspiration. If I want to see meaningful connection and community grow, I need to focus on these aspects in my work and I’m no longer finding much of this on Instagram. I’m ready to leave it all behind.
Whenever we’re considering a significant change, there’s hope and there’s worry.
Shutting down one way of sharing my work with people feels significant. Pressing pause or even delete work built and accumulated over five years feels significant.
I know I could chicken out from quitting IG, like I have in the past, by convincing myself of its benefits, that I’m using it constructively, that I’m protecting my time, that it’s a way to serve the people I care about and that I’m still getting something out of it.
Without giving voice to the worry, we rarely have the courage to make the change.
So, I’m starting the year off by asking myself:
What’s the hope and what’s the worry of leaving @sensemakingspace behind?
This is a personal inquiry, not a blueprint for what you might need or want to do regarding your relationship with social media. I’m not interested in being a social media expert; but I’m curious about what we attend to and how this shapes our experience of meaning and our relationship with ourselves, others and the world.
What’s the hope?
Hope #1: Working to the beat of my own drum, instead of creating social signals to broadcast that I’m good.
Different tactics are used to make us hang out on social media. A particularly clever disguise has been deployed to keep us creating and sharing: the pursuit of being authentic.
Authenticity needs us to recognise the existence of a public and private sphere. We aim to build a life in which these spheres have a reasonably large overlap. We nurture relationships where we can let ourselves be seen, warts and all. We seek work that aligns as best as possible with our values and what brings us alive. Where we have some influence, we try to shape workplace culture or communities that make it safer for people to be themselves.
Authenticity means that we allow ourselves to keep parts of us out of the public gaze.
On socials, however, I’ve observed authenticity being distorted into having to reveal everything publicly. And if we don’t, we feel ever so slightly ashamed that this may make us inauthentic. Being authentic has become the equivalent of being good (and vice versa). So, our worry about being authentic goes straight to the heart of one of our deepest, universal needs: to be lovable and to be loved.
And when this need isn’t met (in our perception or reality) we run on the fumes of our primal fears of being abandoned or ejected from the social (media) community we are part of. Cancel culture is cruel.
Social media is affecting my relationship with authenticity. I’ve spent too much time justifying to myself (and sometimes others) what I want to keep private and what I’m willing to reveal, and why. The choices of what we reveal and what we hold back are personal. More recently, I’ve felt that the drumbeat of the authenticity club tripped me up. And the hope is to fully reconnect with the beat of my own drum.
Hope #2: Unleashing what’s possible when I create freely.
I’ve noticed a worrying internal chatter whenever I was creating: should I and can I use this on IG and if so, how? Another unhelpful constant voice said: am I just adding to the noise?
It worries me that the ways in which we like to express ourselves get shaped by trends and algorithms. I don’t want my creativity getting moulded by reach or engagement. I don’t want to create to grab people’s attention. I want to make people think, invite them to pause, and get them curious about themselves and life – and what is possible.
I’ve also used the justification that I stay on socials to serve others. So many of us work so hard on these platforms to be of service. Of course, if yours is a business account like mine, we use it to let people know about our products and services as well. But beyond that, we serve by sharing information and knowledge. We serve by creating endless flows of inspiration, beauty, wisdom, and ideas. We serve by building communities.
I’ve never cared much about the stats, but I’d be lying to say the silence never gets to me. It’s hard to stay immune to whether what I share is received by anyone or sifted out. When social media puppeteers amplify sponsored content, reels or whatever else is trending or fits their political agenda, they steer people away from what we created. We’re asked to create for an audience but share into the void of an empty theatre. It leaves me with the question: who am I serving by paddling like crazy in the sea of content where constantly changing algorithms decide whether the volume of my voice is turned up, down or off?
Hope #3: Making time and creating spaces for true connection
The premise of social media has always been connection. They claimed to help us nurture relationships, rediscover lost connections and find our tribe.
We have been and are pouring not just time, but also a lot of love and care into building these communities. I know that I’ve told myself I can’t leave, not only because I feel a commitment to the community, but it also feels like something too precious to leave behind.
While I’ve met several wonderful people on the platform who I wouldn’t have met otherwise (and for these connections I’m grateful) it’s becoming increasingly hard to ‘find your tribe’. Even if you find it, it’s tricky to stay in touch; comments become less meaningful and get reduced to a bunch of emojis consistent with our shortened attention spans.
Eventually, connections get fragile and peter out. I’m desperate for deeper, stronger relationships. And I’m finding this quality of connection with people attending my workshops or programs. I’m finding it with my 1:1 coaching clients. And on the odd occasion, when someone emails me after reading one of my newsletters. I’m finding it in private communities, ringfenced from the social media arena. I’m finding it in the workshops or programs I’m participating in.
I’ll treat my time as a precious resource for meaningful action towards real connection: to shape inspiring, soft and honest spaces for meaningful inquiries, vulnerable awareness and mutual support amid the messiness of life.
What’s the worry?
As I wrote earlier, without giving voice to the worry, we rarely have the courage to make the change.
Worry #1: failing to relocate my connections successfully into the non-social media world.
I’m worried about losing sight of people’s contributions and creations, unless they have other outlets like a blog or newsletter. Or unless we are physically close enough to meet or relationally close enough to follow through on the idea of having a virtual coffee catch up. This is not FOMO; it’s anticipated sadness.
I’m equally worried about some people losing sight of my contributions and creations, because they don’t sign up to newsletters in general or don’t read them in and among a flurry of overwhelming emails.
Worry #2: losing sources of inspiration
I’ve regularly spent time curating my IG feed towards my sources of inspiration. By strategically liking and commenting on the posts of inspiring folk, I’ve hoped that their work would get a more prominent position in my feed. I’ve loved following artists I most likely wouldn’t have come across without IG. I’ve also loved accounts that amplified female voices, marginalised voices, and thought-provoking voices. But the curating got harder, and the interruptions of unwanted, irrelevant content are getting worse.
I still worry about missing the visual and aesthetically beautiful input I’ve soaked up and delighted in: colours, marks, materials and simply letting the flow of creativity in others remind me of my own yearning to create and make.
What will I do?
Rick Rubin writes: “Art is a circulation of energetic ideas.”
I want a flow of rich information, new knowledge, and thought-provoking commentary, but I can no longer tell myself that quickly (!) popping into IG is a convenient let alone meaningful one-stop-shop for this.
Therefore, I resolve to curating a list of people and organisations that inspire me.
I’ll sign up to their newsletters (if I haven’t already). I’ll bookmark their websites.
I’ll ask for virtual coffees and keep having the IRL chats that are already woven into my life.
I’ll revisit my podcast subscriptions to keep hearing from the people who inspire me and challenge my thinking.
I’ll read their books and listen to their talks.
I’ll join their workshops and learn from and with them.
I’ll keep writing my newsletter and blog posts.
I’ll be open and curious about collaborations, and I’ll have more time that I can dedicate to them.
For now, I’m staying on LinkedIn; not because it’s a perfect social media platform. At the moment, it still gives me an opportunity to be connected with people I value. I’m worried this will change and I hope it won’t.
Is leaving Instagram a perfect decision? No, it’s imperfect and personal. Maybe permanent, maybe not. I don’t expect anyone to care, certainly not the system. But right now, it feels like a step I’m ready to take.
P.S. you can of course use the question ‘What’s the hope and what’s the worry?’ for any inquiry into a sticky topic…