I’ve literally just had a surge of inspiration after posting on LinkedIn. Stranger things have happened just after I’ve decided to paint my nails! If you’ve tried to type with wet nails, you’ll totally feel my pain.
So what did I post? Well, it was this…
‘How does social media make you feel, honestly? Does it enrich you or does it drain you? I’m genuinely a 50/50. I see both sides of the coin. It has the power to connect us like never before, but then it also can be a breeding ground for hate on so many levels. How about if you have mental health issues? How does it make you feel then? Do you use it to reach out, or to compare yourselves to others with seemingly perfect lives? We have the power to make the digital space our greatest asset or our greatest failure. Do you agree?’
I know, all very deep for a Tuesday evening. Since my last post, I’ve been thinking a lot about my chosen path in life. I work in the digital industry, which can be the best of things and the worst of things, usually all at the same moment! It is such a strange beast after all.
The idea of the internet and social media is something which is still relatively new in the span of the human lifetime. We really don’t have enough experience to know how it will all pan out! There are parts of me that have such joy at being able to create on a daily basis; then the other bits just want to cry and hide. The later is usually when there is some argument on Twitter about something completely and utterly moronic.
It seems that social media can bring the worst out in us, but why? Is it because we get great big balls and feel that we can say something from behind the screen that we’d never say face to face? Or is it because we’re exposed to more opinion that we’d get at the local bus stop or pub? I really don’t know. (I do know, however, that I have gone off in my head singing AC/DC big balls – go hunt it out if you don’t know it – a spectacularly filthy song, which you should not belt out at said bus stop, believe me!)
I worry, that as someone who has questionable mental health, that I’m actually setting myself up for more trouble. After all, it’s far to easy to get sucked into the pits of despair when you spend too long comparing yourself to someone else’s highly edited life on Insta. We all do it, we like to think we don’t, but we do. We all get the ads or have some voyeuristic tendencies towards people we don’t know. We’re just nosey creatures after all. It’s like we’re keeping up with the Jones but in the 21st century.
I genuinely do sit on the fence with this. I have learnt so much being part of the digital age. I know more about skincare, foreign climes, cars, hell even knitting, than I would have done before the advent of social media marketing. That is a good thing! But I also know that it has the tendency to make me want to isolate myself further and retreat into the Oz like wonder of my Instagram feed. Though I suspect clicking my heels will never truly bring me back home.
Not Middle Aged 