Early in 2021, it was pointed out to me that I was a bit aggressive in my political views on social media. Guilty as charged. I’m pretty passionate about my beliefs and values and for many years I didn’t speak up because I was afraid to do so. After finding my voice and confidence, a social media presence was fun and stimulating for me. In fact, in hindsight, it was pretty darn addicting. I was attracted to the divisiveness, to the arguments, to all of the energy, albeit negative energy.
After getting called out on it, I decided that the right answer was to remove the people from my social media who I felt were the most egregiously negative. Anyone who posted obvious misinformation, and those who were racist, sexist, etc., I felt good about removing or hiding them from my social media feeds. Good riddance to them. No regrets on that. And yet I realized that I hadn’t addressed the real issue with my aggressive social media posts, and that was me.
The Addictive Quality of Negativity
Why was I so set on correcting people on social media or arguing with people? What did I really think was going to change from my comments? Surely, I wasn’t going to change their minds or help them to see the (in my opinion) error of their ways. I wouldn’t feel better by arguing with them. In fact, I often felt more frustrated and upset. One piece of awareness that I had was that by posting some of these things, I often got quite a bit of positive responses from others. In a very divided world, having people agree with you feels good. It feels less lonely and less scary. I felt validated and more connected.
The connection piece was an important insight, and thus I started to look for people both in real life and on social media who were sharing things in a way that felt positive, factual, and kind, and I connected with them. Who doesn’t want some like-minded people in their life? I do! But I also wanted more clarity about why I was attracted to the negativity in the first place. And then I realized that so many of us are attracted to that. We stop to stare at a terrible car accident, or we watch television shows of people killing and abusing each other. We watch the evening news which is filled with negativity, violence, and misery. It’s addicting!
Don't feed the troll! Curate your social media feeds to foster productive engagement with the world. #negativity #politics #news #socialmedia Click To TweetSo, the biggest challenge for me was to find ways to stay connected, stay informed and realistic, and avoid the addiction of misery and miserable people. No easy task! I still remove or hide people on social media for the same reasons that I did before. I don’t watch the news, but I do briefly read the news each day and I do so from a variety of sources. This feels a lot better. The world is scary and divided, and yet my jumping into that fray didn’t improve the world and certainly didn’t feel good to me.
I’m keeping social media for some of the ways I use it for my business, and of course for the cute kitten videos. If you catch me arguing with you about something, remind me that there are kitten videos that may serve me better.
Love,
Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC