Social Media needs some personal restraint. For a lot of people it has become destructive, a time sink that bypasses more substantive achievements that people could have, myself among them. Yet its popularity, even when toxic or because of that toxic element, continues. It is alluring. Nobody really needs Adderall or Ritalin to pay attention, as attention is not needed. A Tweet requires conservation of words, which means you can read a lot of them in a short time. And as we keep our device and tablet screens in our visual focus, these programs assure us that there are other people on the other side. We used to have other people at the Mall, and probably still do at the workplace. The stadium may have tens of thousands of people, but they are not interactive with us. The electronics match us to people who respond in an era when, even in the workplace, the cubicles and factory floors keep responses intermittent at best.
I am not on all platforms. I never signed up for TikTok, which at least one state tried to ban. A site restricted to physicians called Sermo wore out its welcome. I don't miss it. The WhatsApp app has been downloaded to my smartphone. I never open it.
So my daily cyberspace surf sessions really begin with four, all with their own overlaps and their own uniqueness:
Each morning I go to all four, though not in the same sequence. Any notifications from each, from the most trivial Like to the usual email updates of places where my subscription is intentional. No message? Move on. More typically, I just admire myself momentarily for having posted something yesterday that caused a reaction in somebody else.
Then I move to my daily blog to begin composing the next entry. And my daily five crosswords come next.
But the discipline to do things that advance me yield to things that get my brain to release endorphins and enkephalins. So at the very least succumb to the social media in a defensible way.
Email enables me to conduct my personal business. Its delete trash can makes it easy to clear. By now I can recognize phishing and move it to spam. That winnows the messages to notices of articles related to my professional activity, a writing group I subscribe to and periodically post what I have written, notices from reputable publications where I am also a subscriber or participant. Requests to do a Torah reading arrive that way, along with notices of my synagogue's activities. Clutter easily managed. And there are times when I need to send somebody else a message. Virtually no politically generated thought takes place in this forum.
Facebook lives off its more glorious past. Like many of my era, HS Class of '69, the lure of reconnecting with old chums, most in limbo for forty years, had endless merit. We learned of each other's careers, families, geography, personal and political views, in a short summary, where their adult lives took them. My HS had its bullies, but not a lot, and learning how to cope with them made most of us antifragile, fully capable of swimming through our personal circumstances. While everyone on our contact list was designated Friend, we found gradients of friends to be the reality. As we learn about people of our past nearing the completion of their careers, grandparents or at least empty nesters, the people we connected to as electronic friends were often very divergent from the people we had hung out with, shared classroom space with, or went to USY with as teens. Was never close to the Cheerleader types then or now. Found myself attracted to people whose posts and reactions displayed kindness. Unfortunately, Facebook became Meta, algorithms ruled, and advertising made stockholders rich. Those several dozen sources of electronic banter and sharing parts of our current lives dwindled to about fifteen, all admirable people if not the fifteen that I would have selected to continue from my original list of a hundred or so if free of algorithms. But with those fifteen, we still share interests. I like seeing places that they visit as they visit them. Parents have died during that interval, with abundant messages of condolence. Birthday greetings are conveyed by thoughtful reminders. In order to get to the people, I have to endure a feed of twenty commercial, political, ideological, and otherwise disruptive messages. And I have acquired my own Likes. Pictures of cats, whether cute kitty or awesome tiger, can get a Like. And I have my teams. The algorithms figured out which ones they are. So FB needs the time on it rationed, the responses mostly limited to messages to people I know personally who have made their own contribution, and maybe a swipe at a coach of one of my teams when they falter. And as unsolicited faux news appears, I am generous with its remove procedure. They ask you why. "I find it offensive" needs to be added to the options.
Reddit enables me to think. I subscribe to r/Judaism and r/Jewish cooking. Unsubscribed to r/my home state due to some unwelcome responses to one of my rare posts. And usually I allow my initial screen to just be HOME with whatever the company thinks I should see. There are thousands of subjects. Everyone is anonymous with an avatar. It also seems to be moderated, as trolls and overt nastiness is rare. For r/Judaism I am a serious contributor. People present dilemmas from anti-Semitic experiences to how to engage more to other queries more suitable to Dear Therapist. My range of knowledge, my experience with synagogues and organizations, and my advanced age that has lived through how the Judaism of today got that way is helpful to scores of other people, Jewish and not. Since my satisfaction as a contributor does not depend on keeping score with Likes, I can be at that site a very long time. While often rewarding, I could and should be doing other things instead.
And finally, Twitter, that cesspool of toxic applications of the English language. Its only redeeming feature is that people of major accomplishment, whether celebrities, elected officials, thinkers of the upper tier, have all established their base there. While they travel in spheres other than mine, I am not likely to meet any of them. But they let me into their electronic space where I can have my say if I keep to the rationed number of characters. And it has helped my expressions. When I exceed my allotment, I have to edit the response to make it more compact. An unexpected benefit. People have been harmed by engaging too seriously, but if I really want is not friendship but access to ideas from people of public presence, that will suffice. Harm to me is unlikely.
Sites I either neglect or reject are much larger that the four in which I engage. In another century, our endogenous CNS pleasure chemicals came from opium dens where people escaped from anything else they could be doing instead. We have that now, more with X than with any of the others. Except it is not really the escape from engagement but its illusion. I keep a daily task list, created each evening, reviewed each morning, referenced periodically through the day until I compose a new one the next evening. Engagement with old friends is on the list, FB being the best way to do that. Many of these tasks, the writing and learning in particular, are also best done on screens, though my mind acting solo with what is presented or with what I create. Engagement is better done selectively, even if helpful to others, as my contributions to r/Judaism often are. Put your own mask on first. Advance my own brain, environment, face to face encounters first. And some rationed time for
- Twitter, now rated X
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