Social media

[hirondelle]

Do you feel social media, texting and excessive screentime in general has a negative effect on your mental health?  If so how? And what do you do about it?

[Moonhawk]

This right here has been in my thoughts alot recently. Should I close my accounts, should I leave it all behind and just do something else with my time. A few weeks back I was stopped myself from social media and would read a book instead but it always calls back to me. I think social media fucks with my anxiety sometimes really bad so I might ignore it more now than before. So my plan is every time I open social media I would switch apps to my kindle app to read a boom.

[hirondelle]

I feel the negative effects very definitely. The act of scrolling aimlessly through newsfeeds. Endless chats. Excessive consumption of YouTube videos and news articles. Mindless casual gaming... My life reduced to a lit rectangle. I look up and find it hard to focus on the middle distance... Further than that is just a concept. But if I put my phone away for a day I start to remember who I am. I read books with pleasure, dream creative dreams, make plans. 

Social tech is the opium of the people and cell phones the delivery system. 

Northlands is okay though

[hirondelle]

 

[fox]

I disengage from life via my phone and it's an issue. My connection is IG. It's so scrollable and brainless - I love it. I am not as bad as I've been in the past, but I find that in this new disillusioned, limbo life that I have no timeline for, or way to escape for more than a few hours at a time, it's a quick step away. While there are aspects of that I celebrate, I hate when I catch myself doing it around my boys. That is personal work I am actively trying to do. The phone gets stowed away, unreachable, when I'm with them - when I think to do it, and I'm not fucking perfect at all. Truly, the connection to the phone is really only important when I'm not with them as it's my point of contact if there are issues at school/daycare. When they're there, real human connection is actually more important. There are times for chatting and IG. (This is not to say that I am 100% on with my kids all of the time. That's as unfair to them as it is to me - they do not need me always and they need to know that. But, I can read a book in that time. Or, as I am apt to do, clean or bake - with them, when they want to help/participate.)

Because this has also manifested hugely in my personal/intimate life to a point of contributing to the cracking/breakage, I am more cognizant of my use of tech. I also notice which people in my life use it and when. I do not want to become a person who sits across from a loved one and hammers thumbs on a digital keyboard more than engaging with my person. There are times for it - important calls/messages, checking times, whatever other real life events occur at any given time - but usually the phone/whatever can be clicked off and we can be interactive humans.

I didn't watch the YouTube yet, but my kids are, so far, without much screen time. It's been that way since Day One. They like to watch the odd video, with me or their father, on YouTube (though we're more inclined to hunker down for an episode of a cartoon on Netflix), but that's it. They're six and three, so it's easy right now. I am hoping that my awareness of my own habits will help me to cultivate reasonably healthy habits in them, too.

Sometimes I hate tech and SM and this shit, but then I remember NL and the people I've met, and grown closer to, via the internet and I realize it's a tool and it's up to me to self-govern.

Fucking self work.