Hi guys, you may know that I’ve been listening to The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett recently and another standout topic is his relationship with social media. In episode 38, he asked his listeners to imagine a service that is free and allows us insight into the minds of the most intellectual people, that service is social media. As we all know, it has become a mainstay of our everyday lives. It has helped us develop our brands as well as connect with friends, celebrities, look at humorous content and so on. However, it can have its downsides as I’ve discussed before as it has opened a gateway for anonymity leading to plenty of online abuse and basing our self-worth on external values. It’s easy to get caught up in the bad of social media but with a constructive approach and taking control of what appears on our timeline. We can reap the benefits social media has to offer.
Take a break
Like everything, if something constantly drains our time and energy, we need to take a break from it. This applies to social media as well. Whether it’s because we are getting a barrage of abuse or if people seem to have a perfect life. Constantly can affect our mental health and at times we need a take a break. There are times where we need to get away from the hype to recharge our batteries and come back refreshed with a clearer view of the bigger picture.
Take control of your newsfeed
If you feel what appears on your newsfeed does more harm than good, don’t be afraid to be assertive and clean up your library if necessary, more importantly, simply unfollowing someone can mean their posts may still appear on your timeline at some stage and if necessary mute or block them. Steven Bartlett made a great point about this in his podcast Diary of a CEO and described it as the equivalent of overloading the bin and not emptying it out. This isn’t easy as some of us can develop a blind spot for influencers that preach fake values that cause us more misery than inspiration.
Stop catching rocks
Steven also discussed on his podcast that one resolution he wanted to make for 2020 was to stop catching rocks. By this, he meant that he would not invest his time and energy in getting arguments with internet trolls that serves no benefit to him. He illustrates this vividly with an example of someone commenting on one of his posts asking if social media has benefited companies. He subsequently spent 40 mins researching every company that has benefited from social media only to click on their profile and see that they were at the heart of stupidity and he wasted his time arguing with a moron. Steven made a great point in that even if you prove someone wrong, there’s no benefit for you as you have consumed your time and energy for nothing.
Final Thoughts
Steven believes that social media is still incredibly powerful and is an easy way of obtaining useful knowledge about life and reassure us that there is nothing wrong with how we’re feeling as it’s just case of not having some of our needs met. He believes that people are choosing to attend a circus and consuming food with regards to social media and their mental diet.
Furthermore, he resonates this with the book Lost Connections regarding the fact that the current generation has more feelings of loneliness than their predecessors. He illustrates an important extract from the book in that the digital world has cut people off from recreational activities such as spending time with friends and so on. In an interview with the author Johann Hari, they discuss someone who had been on antidepressants suffering from chronic mental health issues who is prescribed to a gardening class and the results were profound. They found that the latter was 2x more effective than antidepressants as the individual found their sense of belonging and that a recreational activity fulfilled their needs to engage with the natural world as well as a feeling of being accepted in a group which highlighted that the individual and many others didn’t have an illness and it was just that their intrinsic needs were not met.
Without doubt, social media has changed our lives for the better and has streamlined communications with distant relatives, companies and influential figures. It has helped all of us become brands and strengthen interpersonal relationships and most people use it for the right reasons. Although there are some bad eggs out there, we can take a proactive approach to ensure we get the best out of social media and unhelpful materialistic content is filtered out.
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