📝 social media isn't social anymore

[thetrevorharmon]

The first full week in July 2016 was a particularly brutal week. Within a few days, there were several shootings across the country involving police on both sides of the gun. The first day of that week was July 4th, and by the end of that week, many of us wondered if the ideals that America was founded on were being achieved.

At the time, I was living in the heart of Chicago, just a few blocks south of the city's center. After the shootings happened, everybody had an opinion. As the week went on, I was completely inundated with ideas about gun control, how America was falling apart, and why cops are/aren't the worst thing to happen in modern times. By the end of the week, I decided that an overload of opinions wouldn't lead me to actual knowledge about the issue, so I deleted social media off my phone and took a break for a week.

My week break unexpectedly turned into a completely new perspective on social media. Here's what I learned.

You have a relationship with social media, and it's your job to manage it.

I had no idea how much I wasn't doing to manage my relationship with social media (or even that I had one!). But here's the truth: social media is designed to captivate attention in the same way that gambling does.

After changing my relationship with social media, I learned (or maybe re-learned) certain important lessons.

1. You aren't missing out on anything meaningful.

The number one driver to keep me on social media 

2. You aren't letting yourself get the down time you need.

3. You're missing out on real social interaction.

[thetrevorharmon]

the death of the follower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwn6-8XpIuE&ab_channel=JackConteExtras

[thetrevorharmon]

When I first joined social media, it was much simpler. My first social media was a Facebook profile in 2007. Back then, Facebook was still school-centric, and I remember I needed to put the name of my high school so that my profile was attached to some kind of school. When I first joined, only five of my friends were on it (and most of those were fairly loose connections kind of friends), so it was easy to see what everybody was posting. There was no algorithm to serve up new content, so I could easily reach the end of the new posts. Back then, Facebook pages also had the ability to direct message anyone who followed the page. It was an amazing tool as someone with a small high school band to be able to directly reach friends and followers!