[TRANSCRIPT]
LH: Hello everyone and welcome back to Digital Hope Talk. I'm Lauren Hug and I thank you for listening and being willing to explore the upsides of our digital world.
Today we’re going to talk about social media self-care, because the only way we can embrace the good things in social media is when we feel okay navigating digital spaces.
This is Episode 4: When Digital Connections Aren’t Healthy. Pruning Online Ties to Help Offline Relationships Thrive.
Social media puts the stories, images, and thoughts of outsiders and people we barely know alongside those of our most cherished loved ones. It connects us with people we know deeply and intimately (our closest friends and family), people we know relatively well in specific contexts (like co-workers, gym buddies, fellow hobby enthusiasts), complete strangers we encounter through online discussions, and, of course, celebrities and thought-leaders.
Though these connections carry different weight and play different roles in our emotional and intellectual landscapes, they all exist in the same digital space and are organized not by our own internal sense of who and what is most important to us, but by engagement-maximizing algorithms. This makes social media disorienting: a link about a mass shooting is wedged between photos of Halloween costumes and a meme about Mondays. A person may post cute family photos one minute and rant about something the next. There is no context to help us sort and make sense of our feeds.
It's up to us to curate our social media experience and teach the algorithms to deliver the content we want to see. As Simon Kemp, CEO of Kepios said in a Twitter thread:
Our feeds are what we engage with. Remove, unfollow, or mute people who 'pollute' your feed. Everything on social media has been shared by a person. If it's in your feed, there's a good chance someone in your network posted or amplified it, so choose your 'friends' wisely.
Generally that’s good advice and fairly easy to follow when the people “polluting” our feeds are celebrities, thought-leaders, strangers, or those we barely know. But what are we to do when a person “polluting” our feed is a close personal friend or family member?
The role a person plays in our life is a crucial factor in deciding how to respond to digital content they post that’s hurtful, inaccurate, or worrisome. It’s also a crucial factor in how their content impacts us. We may opt to forgive a lifelong friend or family member for something they post, but unfriend a recent acquaintance for posting the exact same sentiment or link. On the other hand, it may be far more important to us to confront hurtful content from a lifelong friend or family member, while similar content from an acquaintance barely registers with us. Before we act, we need to be aware of which messages from which sources are affecting us and try to understand why.
Despite being only one aspect of our interactions and experiences with close friends and family, their hurtful or inaccurate social media posts can tarnish how we perceive them. We start to associate them with OPINION X instead of everything else we know about them and have lived through with them. The more they post about X, the more tempting it is to see their social media behavior as the defining characteristic of who they really are.
In the pre-digital world, one of the key ways we maintained relationships with close friends and family members who expressed hurtful or worrisome views was by knowing those conversations were confined to certain times and places. Eventually the discussion ended and we resumed doing the many other things our relationship was based on … or we headed to our separate physical spaces until the next time we saw or talked to that person. We had context for the conversations and a break from them.
Social media changed that. Because content flows incessantly and posts live forever on profiles, we are constantly reminded when a deep rift exists between a loved one’s view and ours. Encountering their opinion in digital spaces between visits or phone and video calls means there’s no break, no downtime, no distance from the parts of people we love that trouble us. And being reminded regularly that this person holds those views amplifies that part of them, causing us to focus more on their hurtful opinions than on all the things we appreciate and love about them.
One of my friends routinely posts things that are the complete opposite of some of my beliefs. Without social media, I’d probably have no idea how far apart we are on some issues. They don’t come up often in our conversations because we mostly talk about our everyday lives. And when we do find ourselves discussing a topic on which we disagree, it’s always eye-opening and entertaining.
I perceive the give and take of our friendly conversations as vastly different than his online tone. It’s belligerent. So belligerent my kids often ask me why I’m still friends with someone who not only thinks that way, but is determined to flood digital spaces with those viewpoints. My answer is always the same: he stood by me during some of the most painful and difficult experiences in my life. I don’t understand how the self-sacrificing, courageous, kind person I know is so committed to viewpoints I see as dangerous and terrifying, but he is far more than his social media content. And he matters to me more than the things he posts.
That’s why I haven’t blocked or unfriended him. But his posts have impacted how I conduct our friendship. I find myself less excited to catch up, so now we don’t talk as often as we used to. I worry that I’ll discover his offline behavior now mirrors his online behavior, and, rather than forgiving him for what he posts, I’ll be forced to reconsider the nature of our friendship.
Severing digital connections in cases like this may, in fact, allow for a much healthier, happier relationship. Not because I’m seeking to avoid different opinions or create an echo chamber, but because I want to preserve my relationship with a person who means so much more to me than his digital activity.
Pruning branches improves plant health, encourages growth, and prevents the entire plant from dying. Likewise, pruning online ties can prevent digital behavior from infecting, choking, or killing a rich and complex offline relationship. It stops social media from dominating the way we perceive our loved ones.
Thoughtfully severing digital ties cannot be done covertly or in retaliation, though. It requires a conversation about what we’re planning to do and why. It gives us an opportunity to let the person know how much they matter to us, and, because they matter, constant exposure to certain opinions of theirs via social media hurts us. It may create the opportunity for a heartfelt discussion about why the opinions themselves are problematic. It will definitely open up a conversation about positive social media use and why the broadcasting of certain opinions, the frequency of posting about them, and/or the tone and language used when posting have led to our decision to sever digital ties.
Here’s a sample script:
You know you’re incredibly important to me. You also know that we don’t see eye to eye on X. You’ve been posting about X a lot on social media and it’s negatively impacting the way I see you and our relationship. I don’t want that, so I’m going to take a break from your posts for a while. I still want to know about your life, and I look forward to all our conversations and visits. I’m thankful you’re my friend.
This one small act can prevent online behavior from destroying offline relationships.
When I first started writing about digital kindness and positive social media use, I never would have suggested severing digital ties in certain cases. As you can probably tell, I’m a big fan of all the ways the digital world connects us and opens our eyes, and I’m deeply concerned about the proliferation of echo chambers. But the many questions I’ve been asked over the years about how to deal with hurtful posts by friends and family, the responses to newsletters I’ve written about forgiving people for what they post, and a visit to my brother left me pondering whether some offline relationships are healthier without digital connection.
My brother is one of the most important people in the world to me, but we’ve never been connected in digital spaces. He abhors social media and has no social media accounts. Not being connected digitally means we’ve never inadvertently inundated each other with a constant stream of outrage-inducing opinions. We’ve never engaged in hard conversations with each other in a forum where we can “score points” with people who agree with us or where others can jump in and alter the balance of our discussion. We stay in touch in offline ways and navigate our disagreements (of which there are many) in person or on the phone, anchored in the context of our mutual affection and shared history.
Until writing Digital Grace, I never thought much about the fact that we aren’t connected digitally. Now I’m consciously thankful for it. I think our particular relationship is stronger because of it.
Do you have relationships that might be healthier if you weren’t connected in digital spaces?
Have you ever had a conservation with someone about why you’re choosing to unfollow them?
I’d love to hear from you, and learn from your experiences.
[AUDIO] When Digital Connections Aren't Healthy