I’ve been changing the way I use social media and I hope it’s a better alternative to deleting it entirely.

Remember when we thought killing your TV was the solve to many of life’s problems?
That might be an overstatement, but back in those days I think I liked to overstate a lot of things so why not.
And back in those days, it was easy to just get rid of the TV altogether– so I didn’t have one for 15 years or so. But I did have internet access and was able to seek out news, information, and connection more or less whenever I wanted it. In time my maturity caught up with my younger absolutist values of “TV is bad” and we’d watch the occasional movie on the laptop’s DVD drive. (I guess laptops don’t have those anymore?)

Forward to today, we’re on social media and I think we can pretty much all admit it’s got some evils for all the reasons. But it’s also got some upshots, right? You’ve prolly watched the documentary about it, as I did, and it seems a good time to talk about how we use it.
I just don’t wanna throw it out the window altogether… at least not yet. I envy my friends who never really got into it hook, line, and sinker and I’m borrowing some of their methodology for using it, now.

What I’ve done

A lotta this stuff might be common knowledge, but seems worth repeating even if only to myself. Some of it seems to be working at least part of the time. soo…
— turn off all notifications that make my phone buzz or blink or whatever.
— set a timer for limiting use.
— join groups I actually care about. In my case that’s scratched my oh-so-pragmatic itch for information gathering and stoke about things like Airstreams and bikes and gardening and now even Instant Pots. Oye.
— and… seeking MORE SPACE for the people I really want to expand and deepen relationships with by way of deleting lots and LOTS of my friends. I have to take a hard look at admit I only have so much time to devote– only so much bandwidth so to speak– to truly grow meaningful relationships with some certain number of my friends. By unfriending those folks I don’t interact with (virtually or IRL) I gain space to interact with those who I really want to connect with.

Realizing we have lots of different kinds of friends, I decided for a goal to pare down to about 300, for now, or less. I’m still working on it.

How I’ve unfriended a ton of people

Again, so pragmatic… I started unfriending people on their birthday. *wince*
I started about 6-8 months ago.
I’d get the notification… and if I had no idea who some of them were, or how / when / if we’d met, or even connected virtually. So I figured they’re having a good day anyhow and wished them farewell in my mind.
Then, I started unfriending more and more people. I explicitly haven’t unfriended Some really cool people who I liked a lot, virtually, but in the sake of bandwidth to rap with my homies… they had to go, too. A lot of these people are present on the forums I mentioned (say, bicycles for example) and I still get to see their adventures when I choose to tune into that channel, so to speak. It’s kinda great, really.

Today, I still love seeing pictures of awesome adventures, cute kids, dogs, gardens, etc… I love learning and growing and hold hope we can continue to find the best ways to use our technology for good… keep on keepin’ on

BC