Tricky subject this one, social media and my relationship with it. I just began to feel uneasy, a stirring of uneasiness that I could not leave alone. So I did what I do, think for a long time, holding on to a thought, direction pointing to 'social media'. These pieces of thoughts have, over the time, become more connected and easier to share hence this attempt to describe my experiences and observations. Being absolutely clear this is about how I need to manage social media in my life, and how I recognised that my approach needed to change.
Let me begin with the positive I am a half full individual 'powered by optimism', I am not some cynical man, sick and tired of the endless streams of trivia and fashion, the what's new chat that can clog up our phones and lives. I found and find myself liking a lot of content, I like a lot of the ideas and views expressed by lots of folks and businesses and will continue to encourage and act on things I find of interest. Social media is being used to connect with people of similar interests, friends and family and also inspire us to travel and achieve beyond our comfort zone. That is all good! You can, of course, run your business entirely via social media and get very savvy with adverts, content and your niche market, I completely understand; I see and have experienced this, if I click on some content that sort of content is suddenly part of my stream and then it does become click bait for sure. I can also see folks enjoy constructing creative content. I have learnt a lot over the past few years that is for sure. I even went online for some extended yoga study time, and of course, I also work for a distance learning university, but being clear 'online learning' is not the same as social media.
One thing I did do, which was a positive for sure, was to share my very long journey to the handstand, social media makes you accountable, at the beginning anyway, you have placed your flag in the sand, you are doing this! I enjoyed sharing that journey, now it is an embedded practice with occasional posts.
Social media can also share, in a very rapid way, local and international news, events and world affairs. Yes, keeping up to date and being informed of shocking and/or upsetting events is also important for sure. There is a sense that with social media the world can look on and some of the political decisions made in smug quiet confidence, that might have been made in obscurity a few years ago now have not only the regular political accountability (in democratic states) but also the mass of humanity watching and sometimes responding in a collective manner, although the level of passivity can be surprising at times as our senses can be numbed by the repeated exposure to catastrophe and human suffering. We can become sterile and even find the views of suffering and destruction entertaining which is deeply troubling to me.
The reasons I decided to remove all media from my phone were based around the key areas of sensory input, distractions of the mind and attachment, clearly these three areas are connected. Here read attachment as the shocking data of screen time and pick up's of my phone. Asking my teenage tuttee's their average screen time/day was over 6 hours on their phone. Mine was moving to 5 hours, something was up! What the hell was I doing? I could not help but notice my instinctive 'pick up' of the phone. I had notifications turned off, no noise, no red flags but still the 'pick up' the scan and scroll. Considering one of my roles is a very part time yoga teacher where we discuss habits and how we create habits (good or bad) this was one habit that needed to be unpicked head on.
My phone is useful, for sure, I can access spreadsheets, answer emails, do my tax returns, invoice folks, check on eventbrite and other useful travel apps as well (love the Citymapper app) and checking on holiday options:) and yes,when using social media sharing some lovely times when attending or leading retreats all lovely stuff.
An insightful moment and piece of information worth sharing was when I was listening to a psychologist on some podcast (name eludes me) stressing that our mind can cope and has evolved to be in direct contact with other humans, here I mean physically and mentally. The responses, support, community and family ties exhibited by apes and us are tangible and strong. We feel it and can sense this in others. (By the way mental health issues in tribal folk are very low compared to developed worlds) We are not wired to respond and emotionally engage in the amount of connections that are available for us through social media. Even with the most positive of intentions, staying in contact with folks only via social media for me, was more unsettling than I initially thought.
I kind of like walking and talking, chatting and having a laugh, with a few folk who are present, not so much large groups of people but here discount super intense crowds such as Glastonbury which I love!
I did not plan to decide on a day/hour to delete the media I just said 'do it, do it now' and I did. I also decided not to delete my FB business page from my laptop or stop interacting with my only FB group, that was fine. The experiment was and still is the relationship with social media on the phone. Now, I could go on and on here but I am going to offer you some observations so far and thoughts for the future:
Short term observations, lasting 1 week.
1) I kept looking at my phone, sometimes picking it up, then placing it down!
2) sometimes wanting to take a picture but I resisted the urge.
3) I could sense the mind was restless, not turbulent, just restless
4) these short term effects lasted a week
medium term, where I am now
1) less distracted mind, drifting nicely, moving through the day.
2) check the phone for emails (work email server is NOT on the phone), diary review and whats app messages
3) take pictures but only to post later via the laptop
4) do check social media and FB via laptop but only 1 /day
5) sleep is better, I was tired!
Long term
1) I think this is a permanent change.
2) post via laptop and walk away, this means I have to create content not idly post 'stuff' and then scroll through stuff
