Not one person I know is giving up social media. People in my little world (and apparently across the globe) are exploring the countless additional, new socials (and apps) appearing at an exponential rate.
Over the holidays, several conversations centered upon viral videos and various social media posts. For context, I’m mostly referring to Instagram and TikTok. I had nothing to contribute, other than laughter over a few truly hilarious reels on phones held in front of me. All of it was in good fun but the sheer volume of time others devoted to posting and watching made me uncomfortable.
Periodically, I consider actively joining the social media world. Presently, I’m a Snapchat user with five people and check-what-my-kids-sent-me Instagram user. Last year, I created an IG page specifically for this blog with a few starter posts. Then, I saved really funny, inspirational and pretty things to share. I haven’t posted any of it and made the account private. The management of Instagram quickly felt like a part time job.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you need to be on most social platforms to sell your stuff, get your name out there, etc. That’s understandable and there’s no way around it if you’re trying to make money.
I’m more concerned about the every-free-second-doomscrolling TikTok society in which we exist. The average American who cannot refrain from ingesting what their peers are eating, buying, wearing and doing… addicted to a sedentary lifestyle, topped off with shocking amounts of earthly time invested in endless comparison against peers. All of this feels like a recipe for isolation and deep, hidden personal frustration of not being good enough. Do I want to contribute to this? What of value would I even be contributing?
If I opt to join the multitudes on an array of platforms, I need to ask myself why. If I want to know something or share something with a friend, I text or call. Do I need my interests broadcast to the world? More on that next week.
For today, I’m stuck on the following questions and still can’t get on board with posting to Instagram. (I would welcome reading your responses to any of these if you’d like to share)…
- Is social media at large the average American’s version of People magazine? Are we obsessed with them? We want to absorb what everyone else is doing, buying, wearing, reading, where they are going, trying to figure out their tax bracket, home life, politics, religion.
- Or, is social media really just about us? Promotional material focused upon where I am, what I’m eating, driving, reading, earning, what my kids are doing…
- A buzz phrase around the internet is ‘establishing your personal brand’. Does the average person need to post on Facebook or Instagram to root themselves as attractive, successful, kind, pro-this, anti-that? Most of us are multi-layered humans.
- Have we apathetically accepted that the deeply disturbing aspects of social platforms (everything from nefarious algorithms to porn) will not be moderated, controlled, removed? Is this increasingly unregulated, virtually unchecked environment, where hacks happen on the regular, a place we want to share personal information?
You may already be thinking it: does WordPress count as traditional “social media”? I’ll get to that in an upcoming post.
Thank you for reading.
Tales from a Mid-Lifer 
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