I have been lamenting the state of the internet for a while, consciously and unconsciously, as I watch my thumb keep the feed rolling past my eyeballs. But lately, in the silence of my condo, I’ve been able to observe the very real dopamine hit I get, and the very real disappointment that comes after.
You see, it’s the connection with other people that I actually need. And that is not what social media delivers.
I used to regularly take time away from social media, usually a month at a time, once a year. I recently realized that within the last 15 months of quarantine, I’ve taken no time away from it. Perhaps social media featured even more in my life because of the time at home, with myself, me, and I…just me, a lot of me. The doom scroll is just so tempting under these circumstances.
I’ve also noticed recently that many of the people that the ever-shifting social media algorithms deliver to me are people I actually know in real life! So why am I “outsourcing” and reducing my interactions with them through the “terms” set up by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn? Between the Zoom, email, Slack threads, and google doc comments, we are drowning in words and images, and longing for relation, belonging, and togetherness.
Also, why do these private companies get to decide what I see and who I relate to? And why is there increasingly more labor on me to ensure my content is shared? (An op-ed I had in Devex, “How to get your organization’s anti-racism work unstuck” had disappointing engagement amidst their vaccine coverage, so I found myself spending far too much of my time this week sharing it personally.)
What if I took back that power for myself, and instead invested that time and energy in actual, direct, real-time, real-life communication with people, especially since I’m doing it to share my content anyway? What if I no longer let social media reinforce and grow internalized capitalism and toxic individualism and grind culture in me every single day? What would I create then? Imagine! What else would be possible?
“What else is possible?” is a question I ask of our sector all the time, and that I encourage other people to do as well. In this time of reckoning, how can we all examine our roles if we cannot pause, take a break, or find a way to devote our time and energy to new things? If we cannot do so, I’m worried for the changes that are being ushered in at this time. It is not just a time for deliberation and discernment, but also setting a new pace, investing in maintenance of small changes, as well as new dreams. What we do now plants the seeds for the future.
We gave ourselves a time out once a year when I was at Thousand Currents, in something we called “Breakthrough Week.” Its vitality came from the permission and freedom to get in touch with our creativity and natural rhythms. What emerged among staff was always inspiring and exciting.
We all need new ways to embody and ignite social transformation. In this “post-truth” era, when we know there are concerted efforts to co-opt social media to share dangerous misinformation aimed at sowing the seeds of domination and control and ramping up anxiety, this summer social media break feels even more important. I’m interested in two questions:
- How do we face our own personal, sometimes devastating, truths, so that we can create more meaningful dialogue with people with different life experiences?
- How do we support each others’ journeys of discovery about our relationships to complex and inter-related historical, racial, and socio-economic realities – in ways that are about depth and connection, not soundbites and contempt?
In very practical terms, I have a play that’s about a third written that I would like to return to, and a book idea that has been sitting in my head since 2018. Could I use this break to remind me of my responsibility as a storyteller and a bridge builder to seed and fuel more conversations about how to build collective power? Without the energy spent on social media, could it be spent on these far more important projects with more connection and more time?
I’ll report back here to all things “social” in September.
In the meantime, what seeds do you want to plant and grow?
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