By @tessanddog
My morning routine is pretty predictable. I wake up whenever Apollo, my 14-month-old border collie, notices the sun is rising and decides to lay across my torso. Lately this has been between 5:30 and 5:45am. For the next 15-30 minutes, I will play with him by pretending to be asleep, coaxing him to paw my face or take my hand in his mouth as he tries desperately to wake me. This is one of my favorite parts of the day, when he is most affectionate and least subtle.
When I finally make moves to physically get up, I reach for my phone and turn off my white noise app. Then, my mind-finger connection takes over and I almost immediately open a social media app, sometimes Instagram but sometimes Facebook. I don’t even read anything, but before I can consciously think about not “scrolling”, the app is open. I turn it off and get up.
The next few hours I spend with the screen off, taking Apollo and my older lab/pit/hound/supermutt mix, Sky Girl, for a run through some local woods. But while I am not tuned into the world, checking Facebook or scrolling through the news, I am snapping photos and “collecting content” to make sure that I have something to post, to show off, to say “hey look at us!” later when I sit down and “curate” a post. So even though I’m not consuming, I am still participating.
I don’t dislike this experience, but this morning I had some memories of years ago when I ran without a phone and without a “following” or a “brand” or a routine of posting a photo of my dogs in the woods. Was it a simpler time back then? Sure, but not because of social media. My morning routine is not complicated and not a burden to my life. I enjoy sharing my morning runs with people who are fans of the dogs. If someone is uninterested in seeing Sky Girl chase down a stick in a pond, or see Apollo show off his shiny coat, it is easy to avoid seeing those posts—we are in control of the content we consume, selecting the perspectives, posts, opinions, and people who we want to see.
The impact that social media, and in particular Facebook, has had on the world is staggering. Twitter boasts 321 active users, Instagram has 112.5 million, and Facebook projections suggest reaching 1.69 billion users in 2020. While many of these “active user” may be bots, there is no denying that social media is a part of our lives. There are personal accounts, non-profit causes, company accounts, sponsored ads, and influencers that navigate the space. Once you are part of a social media experience, it is increasingly harder to abandon the digital community.
Social media has its utility. This includes staying remotely connected to past acquaintances or friends or people you met once. Or following news sources and reading through national or local headlines. Maybe social media is a tool to see how people review products or places. Perhaps you are using it to communicate with a leader, politician, or company where you have some feedback. If you are looking for similar interest groups, such as female rock climbers in Boston, or professional groups, such as computer programmers transitioning into industry from academia—and other such niche identities or groups, they can be found on social media. Networking with others in positive ways produces chemical changes in the brain, such as the emission of oxytocin, occurring when we experience feelings of belonging. A simple google search will pull blogs and blogs highlighting the benefits of social media for a person or a company, so I won’t re-list those here.
There is more attention recently on the negative impacts—both personal and systemic—of social media. The Facebook machine has been under scrutiny for allowing the perpetuation of false health claims during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as unfounded headlines during the past few political seasons. Hate groups spawn more hate, and insularity within these communities prevents new perspectives from entering the conversation in a way they would without a screen or without high editing paragraphs of opinions prior to posting. Speaking of screens, increasing social distance between people or groups communicating can increase a number of negative psychological responses—such as increasing out-group hate and dehumanizing the “person” behind the user—which often results in personal attacks and verbal slurs or insults that would not normally occur during face to face conversations, where we respect each other as fellow humans. Again, the negative impact of social media is highly researched and blogged over the internet already, so while I highlight a few impacts that come to mind, I do not want to re-list them all.
If I’m not going to present the data behind all the pros and cons, then what am I going to do? I’m using this post as a self-reflection. This morning I spent my run considering why my social media routine exists. I enjoy chronicling the joy I get (and my dogs get, hopefully) from running through the woods daily, but I don’t need to share photos and stories in order to chronical it for myself. When I run on trails, I always bring my phone with me, and therefore I have a camera. Whereas I would not have any “content” to share without taking a photo.
Am I losing anything by doing this routine every time I run trails? Yes, I am and this is where my concerns lie. Trail running is an opportunity to experience “flow”, to be entirely immersed in the experience and physical movement happening in real time, in the now. Having the phantom of taking a photo intruding and harassing my state of mindfulness terminally detracts from achieving “flow”. While bringing my phone with me is a safety method, I think I will start taking more risk by leaving the phone at home or in the car, so I can get back to being immersed in my task and maybe start taking steps back from social media. And now, I’ll end this post with a phrase I learned from all the cool teenagers and undergrad accounts I follow on these platforms…
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
48 peaks 