social media | The Percolator

I’m going to tell you about one of my favorite YouTube videos today. Actually, I’ll let you watch it before I talk about it. If you want to.

I have watched this dozens of times in the last couple years. On the surface, it’s easy to talk about why I like it. I like lots of the Sesame Street-celebrity music videos. (One of my other favorites is this one with Wayne Brady.) This tune is catchy, and I’m a huge fan of Zachary Levi. I think he should sing more than he does. Flynn Rider in Tangled was a good role for him.

But lately, this song has been popping into my head more often. I know that part of it is the line: “You should really take a walk on this lovely sunny day.” Taking a walk solves a lot of problems in this house. There’s something empowering about strapping my 25 lb toddler to my back, leashing my two 75 lb dogs, and going out for a long walk. And we all come home with a better attitude than we left with.

This afternoon I realized there’s more to my enjoyment of this song. I feel a little chastened and challenged by it. I want to be able to say that “I don’t miss my little screen.” I love being outside, or inside too, but I want to be more fully engaged.

I love that this pocket-sized technology has the power to connect me with so many people. As an introvert, texting is one of my favorite ways to communicate. And as a stay at home mom, communication with other adults is an important part of maintaining balance in my life. So I find myself rarely without my phone, and carrying on several conversations throughout the course of the day.

I know I’m not the first person to write a blog about wanting to cut back on social media or mindless phone usage. And that’s not really what this is about, maybe it’s just about letting this catchy little song remind me to be a little more present in reality. Because the phones and the Facebook really aren’t portrayed as bad in the video (which would be kind of amusing considering the medium), they’re a way to connect with friends, a way to make plans and find each other in the real world.

Get out there friends, “reconnect, take some time to self-reflect.” Allowing this song to percolate in my brain has produced some interesting thoughts. What have you read/watched/listened to lately that’s sparked something in your life? I’d love to hear about it.

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:

http://www.anndouglas.net/blog/2017/1/30/how-to-avoid-being-psychologically-destroyed-by-your-newsfeed

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.