social media drama | Boondock Ramblings

Commenting on one of the chapters of A New Beginning that I shared last week, a blog reader told me she likes to read my stories (and serial stories on other blogs like it) to escape from all the negativity in the world today. I told her that was the very reason I was sharing my book in progress on my blog. Not only do I use the story to escape from the negativity of the world, but I want to give others something a little lighter to focus on too.

Last year I deleted my Facebook. Four months later, I added it back to manage my blog page, which I had been managing from a “ghost account.” Here I am again, around the same time I deleted it last year, and I’m ready to delete it again. I won’t delete it again, however, because it is the only way my son currently communicates with one of his friends since I have a Messenger Kids account for him.

Since I don’t want to cut off their main way of communicating at this time (we live 40 minutes away from his friend so we don’t see him every day and this lets them video chat), I’ve instead set up blocks on my computer to remove the temptation of wasting my life away by scrolling on an inane site that often makes life worse, not better.

And yes, I do have that little willpower that I have to set up blocks to keep me off social media, or at least off Facebook. I don’t actually visit other social media sites. I loathe Twitter even more than I loathe Facebook and Pinterest is completely useless and stupid to me. I infrequently use Instagram. I used to use it two or three times a day but haven’t done that since sometime in the fall, I think it was. I finally got sick of caring about whether people cared about what I cared about.

As for Facebook, I get addicted to that not by being on it hours at a time, but by checking it briefly several times a day when I am avoiding doing other things – like packing to move and facing all the emotions with that and facing the reasons for my continuing lack of friendships. When you have spent the majority of your downtime for almost a decade logging into a stupid social media site to do something other than what you should be doing, it can be a hard habit to break.

It’s pretty much a built-in reflex now to wake up and type “Facebook” into my computer each day, which is sad and pathetic. I don’t know what I’m looking for on there anyhow. I never feel better after logging off Facebook. I almost always feel worse and even lonelier than before.

(Incidentally, I don’t click the app on my phone because I haven’t had the Facebook app installed on my phone in two, maybe even three, years.)

Instead of distracting me from loneliness, like I always think it will, being on Facebook fuels my sadness over my lack of friendships because I can see all of those former friends on Facebook, living life and laughing with each other and not caring at all whether I live or die. Yet, each day I believe the lie social media creators like Mark Zuckerberg have drilled into our heads — if you’re not on social media, you’re missing out. In reality, sadly, I am missing out on social media and off it, but maybe someday I will be in the inner circle once again. Like when I’m in my 70s and sitting in a sewing circle.

In the same way that checking out my former friends on Facebook is unhealthy and needs to stop, checking out the latest news about all kinds of bad things going on in the world today is also unhealthy and desperately needs to stop. That’s why in addition to blocking social media from my browser, I have also blocked news sites. My husband works in news, so if a bomb goes off somewhere or some politician gets shot, he’ll let me know. I don’t need to keep reading all the negativity about viruses and nuclear threats and wars and screaming politicians day after day after day. I can create enough negativity within my own mind without all of that. A person can only take so much of that before their mental health starts to be affected negatively.

Like I have done before, I am replacing social media and news with anything I can escape into. Well, not anything – not illicit sex or drugs – but I mean, entertainment or hobbies. I’m blogging (obviously) and often about stupid things (obviously).

I’m writing (books and blog posts).

I’m taking some photos (sometimes anyhow).

I’m reading books.

I’m watching movies.

The bottom line? I’m escaping as much as I can but I know that I can’t escape the bad of life forever. (I went to check my weather app today and there were articles about that virus when on there!!) If I could live in my bathtub with bubbles and a cup of hot peppermint tea and book for the rest of my life, I probably would at this point.

So, how about you? How do you escape from the stresses of life? Good books? Good movies? Dumb movies (or is that just me?)? Hobbies? Let me know in the comments. If it’s something illegal or dangerous to your personal being, please don’t share here. Just get some help. 😉

The mental noise stirred up by social media is deafening – so deafening we can’t hear ourselves think. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest are all blaring in our ears and the words they are screaming are “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” Every one of those sites wants our attention and that means our focus is divided in at least five different digital-based ways throughout the day. Add to that the attention we need for our jobs and our families that doesn’t leave much time for us to think or catch our mental breath. It certainly doesn’t leave much time for ourselves, or more importantly, God.

Last week I found myself caught up in scrolling too much. I scrolled this site and that site and flipped from this app to that app. Throw in some family, and other, life stresses and my brain was practically buzzing by the end of the week, and not in a good way. My thoughts were flitting from one quandary to the next, every few moments. It was like I was turning the channels on the TV or flipping through YouTube videos, only it was my panicked thoughts.

Sitting in the bathtub in a near panic attack from the inability to focus on one thought at a time, I knew what I had to do. I picked up my phone and started deleting apps. I deactivated Facebook, took Instagram off my phone (Facebook hasn’t been on my phone for over a year) and then slid the phone far away from me and picked up a book.

My brain is a jumbled mess on speed even without social media. Throw in a thousand photos or articles at me a day about God knows what, and my brain overloads and eventually shuts down, sending me to a corner, hyperventilating and repeating “There’s nothing like silence” over and over again. Honestly, our brains weren’t made for social media. Our brain can’t comprehend so much information being shoved at it at one time.

When I first started all this social media nonsense, I could handle a few hours of it a day before my brain filter broke and I had to log off. Eventually, I could only be on a couple hours a day and then it was an hour and now I can barely handle five minutes (some days much, much less) before I simply log back off again. Everyone has an opinion and I’m tired of having to muster up the mental energy to either agree or disagree with that opinion. So often I can’t even manage to care what someone else is thinking about or doing, let alone care what hundreds of people think about an issue.

Detoxing from social media helps my mental health immensely, but it also increases my creativity and productivity. Imagine what we could all accomplish if we turned over our phones and computers more often – or at least silenced the social media monster.

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