One of our anchors has sworn off social media for an entire week. No Facebook. No Twitter. No LinkedIn. Nothing. She’s rallied several other moms to join her in this endeavor … and has decided to make a series of stories out of it. She’s calling it Digital Detox.
I’m calling it sheer insanity.
If I go more than four hours without checking Facebook, I get a little twitchy. How bad is it? Last year I went to India for a couple weeks … and spent several days traipsing around the Himalayas. The base camp we stayed at had the faintest of Internet service. Think dial-up, but from the Matthew Broderick-“War Games” era. If I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed there was a guy in the backroom with a hand-crank revving up the electrical surge. I would dutifully park myself in front of their Commodore 64 computer and check Facebook until the tour left for the day. I remember two things about that experience: 1) that the air was so thin I felt like passing out 24/7 and 2) I clearly have an addiction to social media.
I joined The ‘Book brigade back in 2008 after much cajoling from my friends. At the time, I felt like I was the last human being to hop on social media’s bandwagon. Now I find it invaluable … I can send out a status update and 2,376 (at last count) peeps can know what I’m up to.
That being said … 2,376 peeps now know what I’m up to. So on January 1st, I decided to shed one “friend” every day to whittle down my cumbersome friend list. The people I’m unfriending are “virtual acquaintances”, you know, those random people you’ve never met, but since you have so many folks in common you assume you know them.
I talked to our anchor yesterday to see how she was doing, 72 hours into the detox. She was “managing”. I figured she’d be wearing two different shoes, be disheveled and unable to complete menial tasks, but she seems to be holding up well.
More power to her and the moms attempting a social media embargo. Could be worse, instead of a week, it could be 40 days for Lent. Try and wrap your brain around THAT one. I’m gonna go post a status update about the absurdity of that right now.