Can we talk social media for a second? More specifically, all the arguing, name calling, actually threatening someone (which depending on your state, you may face some sort of punishment).
In the words of Taylor Swift, “why you gotta be so mean”?
Being a 9 on the enneagram, watching all this unfold all over my news feed truly exhausts me beyond words. I can scroll through my feed for a few minutes and then set my phone down and I’m definitely ready for a nap. I don’t understand how people can just be blatantly rude all day, every day. I mean, I do understand parts of it, and that their anger has to be coming from somewhere, but why?
I recently posted on Facebook looking for suggestions for what my son could take to show and tell that starts with a Y, and quite frankly surprised I didn’t get someone yelling at me that Y was not the letter of the week in my comments. It just seems everyone has to argue and everyone has to be right, even if they don’t have any first hand knowledge of the situation. And I’d like to give a big thank you to some great friends with plenty of Y suggestions!
So, what have I done to make my feed a better place?
- My new bff is the mute/unfollow button. Stay friends with people without seeing their drama and then they don’t get their tinsel in a tangle because they suddenly noticed their number of friends decreased. And by doing that, that’s one less, “I was just unfriended…” post you have to see. If you could see my eye roll right now, you’d know how I really felt about those.
- Revamp my privacy settings.
- Take advantage of Facebook’s privacy settings for individual posts where you can post something, but select who you hide it from. Total honesty here: I have a decent sized chunk of people who are permanently on this list. *Thanks to the gods of technology*
- Go through my groups and pages I like and remove myself from them if they are no longer applicable to me. Less stuff to see = less time spent on social media.
- If all else fails, just unfriend them.
In fact, those three dots you see in the top right corner on each Facebook post can help you with a lot of the issues. Click on those dots and you can snooze people, hide all their posts, unfollow groups or pages, or more.
These are all temporary fixes to something more serious. But, like so many other things, one thing that has been ignored for far too long here is mental health and wellness. Personally, if I take these simple, small steps to care for my mental health, it can make a world of a difference in my day.
I’m not here to pretend the world is all unicorns and rainbows. I’m well aware it isn’t. I still get my share of world news and current events. And with that I know everything affects everyone different, and there are two, if not more, sides to every story.
I’m going to leave you with one of my favorite Thomas Jefferson quotes:
“If you read it on the internet, it must be true.”
Or was that Ben Franklin?
You can follow along with Claire and all her motherhood adventures at @hey.its.claireg
