I’ve been mostly off social media since my month long holiday in June 2023.

It’s another one of my non-active choices in that I didn’t decide to take a social media break, it just seemed to happen, I enjoyed it, so it continued.

I’d stopped logging in while I was away as I was occupied either sightseeing, socializing, traveling or resting. Sometimes I even managed to combine a few of these activities!

I didn’t feel like logging in just to post photos. So I didn’t.

I checked on our business accounts to reply to comments and messages and aside from that, I’ve been mostly off.

It’s meant our business has gone down a bit so I need to get a bit more active again. 

The only other negative is that I’ve missed seeing what family and friends have been doing though this has led to a few chats here and there to stay informed. Also, some messages have been exchanged with those that noticed my absence and contacted me directly to check I was ok – thanks!

Nothing to worry about. I’ve been particularly tired over the last half of the year and I think I was not that interested in what I’d been seeing on social media at that time. I had no pull toward checking it.

Somehow my Facebook feed started to have people calling each other names just because one had a different opinion to another. It had articles that when I looked for source material, the facts were questionable at best. 

Neither of these things interests me.

I like people having different opinions as it makes the world interesting, I can learn from people who think differently to me, and it’s great to have other perspectives that I may not have considered. This is how my own views evolve.  Also with reading but that could be a post itself!

I don’t like name calling. Especially when it’s just because someone doesn’t agree with someone else. 

I can’t think of a single positive thing to come out of insulting someone or calling them a name. 

Everyone digs in their heels at this point as both people then tend to take their views to the extreme and stop considering the views of the other. 

It becomes “I am right and you are wrong”. I don’t see how this can be the case with an opinion anyway but this is where it seems social media is right now.

If the idea was to help someone see a different perspective and maybe change their view, there is so little chance in that happening at this point, that it’s better to disengage and move on.

The same thing seems to be happening with politics around the world. There are a lot of extreme views going on covering various issues and little room for compromise or even acknowledging that one view or the other isn’t “right” it’s just a view. 

Then the articles… 

I’ve had some sharing articles and some randomly popping up in my feed. Again, I’ll read anything just because it’s there and I’ll learn something. What I was learning from a lot of these though is people not having read the source material, misquoting, and quite a bit of opinions masquerading as fact.

This is not journalism and it’s not well researched. 

It’s an opinion piece and would be better if it didn’t pretend to be something else as this confuses people.

I preferred it when social media was a fairly happy place, respectful and fun. Somewhere I could check-in during some downtime and see people sharing their achievements, milestones, photos of their meals (yes, I know that’s know that’s not for everyone!), their kids, their pets, travel, some bad news stories of life thrown in (there will always be deaths and illnesses), information about causes they are passionate about /fundraising for, interesting (though often only useful for a pub quiz) facts and trivia, funny registration plates, books, plus the occasional joke which may be better found in a Christmas cracker but usually still leads to a bit of a giggle.

I could scroll with a smile and the occasional stop of “oh dear” which usually prompted a message to the person for a one-to-one chat. 

Like in my real life but online.

Is it too much to ask for social media to go back to this?

 

* Thanks to The Killers for the title to this post. Haven’t seen them play in years and had a ball when I did. Many of their songs were regularly played at some of the places I frequented in HK and sung by local cover bands. Always brings a smile and on occasions, I’ve even danced!