I have such good news! Ready?
The way you experience social media doesn’t have to be the way you experience social media.
Do you ever get frustrated by Facebook? Troubled by Twitter? Irritable at Instagram? Ticked off by TikTok?
For some of us, the better question is, do you ever not?
Social platforms are hotbeds of negative activity. They don’t just tend toward anger, they trend toward anger. This is especially true on Facebook and Twitter, where the algorithms actually reward outrage.
Sometimes we can feel trapped in our platform ecosystems, like there’s no truly better option because the platforms are the platforms, and our Facebook friends are our Facebook friends, and there’s not a whole lot we can do. It’s easy to feel powerless.
But take heart, Planeteers. The Power is Yours!*
The thing that tends to keep us in mentally and emotionally unhealthy relationships with our social feeds is often a complex combination of algorithm, FOMO, and social expectation. The algorithms—those intelligent, complex bits of code that learn about our behavior and decide what to show us next—expose us to what the platform values, not necessarily what we value; Fear of Missing Out makes us anxious about losing track of what we don’t have; social expectation makes it difficult to sever our social ties between family and friends. (Oh man, just imagine how brutal Thanksgiving will be if Aunt Maggie finds out you unfriended her!)
But each of these three levers—algorithm, FOMO, and social expectation—is a lever you can adjust to make your social media experience calmer, happier, and healthier. Today, I want to focus on a strategy for managing the third lever, social expectation.
Here it is. Ready?
I want you to apply bonsai to your Facebook.
And your Twitter. And your Instagram. And your everything.
I’m sure you’re familiar, at least on some level, with the Japanese art of bonsai. As a Westerner who’s never actually engaged in the practice, I’m not going to pretend to be an expert, but there are a lot of lessons we can learn from this topiary tradition.
Bonsai is all about tending and trimming and shaping small trees in compact containers so that they grow to look like miniature versions of full-size trees. Practitioners of bonsai say it brings them serenity and pleasure, and the pride of a project well-crafted and well-conceived. It’s a practice that takes care, attention, vision, and patience, and if you apply these same traits to your social platforms, with the same goals in mind, you can completely revolutionize your internet experience.
In bonsai, you trim away the branches that don’t serve your vision for the tree. If your vision for your Facebook account is a consistently joyful experience, then the first step is to cut out the people who bring negative energy into your space. Who are the people you’re connected to on Facebook who don’t serve your idea of the Perfect Platform? Who are the connections that continue, time and time again, to fill your space with content that makes you sad, anxious, angry, or guilty?
These people aren’t serving you. That doesn’t make them bad, it doesn’t make them unimportant, it doesn’t make the voices unimportant, and it doesn’t mean you don’t value the positive things they bring into your life. But in your social media life, they’re the people who tilt your balance and make you unwell, who bring emotional sickness and strife into your world, purposefully or not. And Facebook isn’t a productive or healthy space to share with them.
Like a tree with too many broken branches, it’s time to cut away the Facebook friends who don’t serve your wellness or wellbeing.
It’s time to embrace the “unfriend” button.
The role that the Facebook Friend has taken in our society is, frankly, a dishonest one. Facebook has become a perfect proxy for our offline social lives, in the sense that ending a Facebook friendship can feel like you’re actively ending a real-life friendship. We spend so much time on devices and platforms that our entire lives have become a sort of liminal space—we spend our days on a threshold between our online and offline selves, one foot on the ground and one foot in the ether(net).**
But the digital/analog duality of our lives is a false construct. There, I said it. Even though we have to live in the digital space, it’s not a continuation of our actual lives. The internet is a tool; it is not a cooperative reality. The relationships you make and hold in your real life don’t depend on a blue button for survival, and the fact that Mark Zuckerberg has made you think otherwise is why Mark Zuckerberg owns $150 million worth of land on Kaua‘i.
The goal of applying bonsai to your social media space is to cut away the pieces that don’t serve your vision for your own wellbeing. You’re not removing people from your actual life. (I mean, unless you want to, but that’s a different conversation.) You’re taking control of your feed, and you’re shaping it into a happy, healthy place to be.***
The notion of unfriending people can cause a lot of anxiety, for two main reasons. One is that liminal space thing I mentioned earlier. Subconsciously equating Facebook friendship to real-life relationship makes it really uncomfortable to sever that digital, practically imaginary tie. The other reason is because sometimes there actually are real-life consequences of unfriending someone. Sometimes people realize they’ve been unfriended, and sometimes those people do call out the unfrienders. This can lead to awkward or even hurtful confrontations.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
· People who get angry and confrontational about being unfriended on Facebook are grappling with their own confusions of the liminal space reality. They believe, on some level, that their online and offline worlds are the same. Their pain isn’t about you. It’s about them.
· Your priority is your mental health. Someone else’s indignance, however painful for both of you in the short term, isn’t a reason to keep engaging in a harmful digital relationship.
· If you’re still feeling squeamish, good news! You don’t have to formally unfriend someone. You can also just unfollow them, which mutes their content on your feed while retaining their “friendship.” It’s like draping an invisibility cloak over a branch of your tree. It’s still there, but you can’t see it, and don’t have to give it too much thought. It’s not as clear a break from the toxicity, but it definitely ranks lower on the anxiety scale!
Always remember that you are the Marie Kondo of your own digital life. Only you have the power to keep the people who spark joy with their content and respectfully remove the people who don’t. Trimming down your networks takes intention, patience, and discipline, but never forget: Your mental wellness is more important than someone else’s Facebook engagement.
Now You Try It!
This week, I want you to identify one person whose social media content doesn’t serve your wellbeing and trim that person from your social media life. I want you to do so with the intention of making your platform a better space for you, and with the understanding that the person may still have great value to you in other spaces in your life. If it helps, here’s a poem you can recite as you click the unfriend button:
Here’s to you; here’s to me
Here’s to the friends we hoped we’d be!
But all fine things must come to an end,
And Mark Zuckerberg is ruining everything, goodbye.
Not every poem has to rhyme.
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*How badly did I just age myself, be honest.
**This joke would have killed ten years ago. Man, remember ethernet?
***For anyone thinking, “Wait, if we do that, aren’t we just building more echo chambers?” I’ll be putting together a full post on this soon, but yes, we are, and hear me out: That’s okay. By removing the content that doesn’t serve our happiness, we’re building a space that reverberates with echoes of kindness and joy. Yes, it’s true, the generally-held position is that echo chambers are bad, but that’s a misrepresentation. Echo chambers of negativity, misinformation, and cruelty? Those are bad. Echo chambers of kindness and joy? Those can be good, if we build them mindfully and don’t confuse them with the realities of the offline world. More thoughts on that coming soon!