{"id":23522,"date":"2023-01-25T09:00:46","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T17:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=23522"},"modified":"2023-01-30T11:32:29","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T19:32:29","slug":"pause-notifications-what-i-learned-from-two-weeks-off-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2023\/01\/25\/pause-notifications-what-i-learned-from-two-weeks-off-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Pause notifications: What I learned from two weeks off social media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Staying off of social media for two weeks and writing about it for my first feature story was not my idea. There must have been a stunned look on my face when the idea for this piece came up because I heard the words \u201cI know you worked in social media\u201d come out of my editor\u2019s mouth. What was going through my head was, \u201cCan I do this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Honestly, I didn\u2019t know, but I was leaning toward no, I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u00a0joined Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat all within a year of those platforms becoming available, so social media is a part of my life. (And, yes, I\u2019m old. I remember when the internet started, and I once had an ICQ account, the \u201990s version of a chat app.)<\/p>\n

There were exceptions to this experiment. I could continue to be the admin for a Facebook group I run, for example. However, I could not check any other groups or pages, scroll, or post to my feed. Messenger was also allowed, because, let\u2019s be honest, who texts phone numbers these days? My apartment building also has a group chat for sharing information and helping each other out. WhatsApp wasn\u2019t discussed but because I only use it to talk to two friends I felt it was fair game.<\/p>\n

Once ground rules were agreed upon it was time to set me up for success, or at least try to. Even though Messenger was fair game there was a major flaw\u2014the sharing of links to videos and memes. My evening entertainment usually includes exchanging memes and videos with a friend. I begged him not to send me links for two weeks and just save the memes to his phone and send them to me. I\u2019ll confess, I\u2019m a meme stealer. There are more memes on my phone than pictures. He only slipped up once, but I made him save the meme and send it to me again later.<\/p>\n

The next step was turning off notifications to social-media apps. That was an eye-opener. I had a lot more on my phone than I realized. There were only a couple of them I don\u2019t use. Twitch got deleted. Discord and Reddit stayed despite the lack of use.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once notifications were turned off I made a few predictions:<\/p>\n

1. Being off Twitter was going to be the hardest to handle<\/p>\n

2. I would start getting more news from media outlet apps rather than social media apps<\/p>\n

3. I would binge-watch more TV<\/p>\n

4. If the weather warmed up I would use the time to go out and take more photos<\/p>\n

5. If not, I would play darts at home<\/p>\n

As it turns out, I was partially correct.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Taking this break gave me time to reflect on how I\u2019ve used social media over the past 10-plus years. I think I have a slightly different perspective on social media than a lot of people because shortly after I started using Twitter I saw how it was useful for marketing. It wasn\u2019t long after that I started helping small businesses and non-profit organizations use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to gain visibility. I came up with different marketing strategies based on how the different platforms operated. It was a nice little side hustle. I became known in the social media community as The Hashtag Girl because I was good at explaining how hashtags worked. Everyone had their little niche and we all worked together sharing referrals and knowledge. It was a time of grassroots marketing. There were no influencers or paid advertisements, just people making graphics figuring out the best time to post based on analytics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From 2010 until 2017 I worked as a social media marketing strategist, first on my own and then with a friend. Between Victoria\u2019s annual Social Media Camp, Social Media Examiner\u2019s conferences, and the constant stream of tech shows while working, I can\u2019t begin to count the number of hours I\u2019ve spent learning about the ins and outs of how social media operated.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When new social media platforms came out I tested them to see if I thought they would be beneficial to clients. Some of them never took off. Snapchat struggled to gain a foothold before it gained popularity. In the end, the same giants continued to come out on top. I\u2019ve watched how Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest have changed over the years.<\/p>\n

Social media as a business was one aspect of my initial experience but I did have social experience as well. Back in 2009, Twitter was a vibrant community of online discussions and offline gatherings. When Instagram came on the scene with the hashtag, Victoria had numerous hashtags: #yyj, #yyjkids, #yyjbikes, #yyjruns, etc. Every interest group had their hashtag and they were all flooded with tweets. But we also had \u201cTweetups.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once a week the business community had breakfast Tweetups at a restaurant called Cabin 12. There were evening Tweetups where the men went to the Bard and Banker and the women went to various spots for drinks. There were often more family-friendly evening Tweetups at Cabin 12. I still have at least a dozen friends that I met through Twitter. Very few are on Twitter now but we\u2019ve switched to being Facebook friends.<\/p>\n

Twitter has also been a place where I\u2019ve debated politics and shared information on protests and social issues. I took part in #MeToo, was the liaison between campers and the police for #OccupyVictoria, and participated in #RamRanchResistance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With every debate and every cause, new online relationships were established. Some relationships lasted and others didn\u2019t but the experience was always the same. At some point, we all shared parts of our lives that had nothing to do with the issue we were involved in.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After thinking about how I used social media, a two-week break didn\u2019t seem so bad. There was no election or leadership race to debate. Some protests were going on, but nothing local. My friends could use a break from my Facebook feed of memes. TikTok would still be there when I got back. Twitter might not. I didn\u2019t use Snapchat or Instagram enough to care.<\/p>\n

What happened, though, was unexpected, although it shouldn\u2019t have been: the first few days of being off social media helped me focus on finishing my last few assignments for the fall semester. I didn\u2019t get distracted by the counters on all the apps when I changed music from my phone.<\/p>\n

The only app that still had notifications was Facebook. There wasn\u2019t much I could do about that, as I needed to keep notifications on to remind me to check my group. But then I\u2019d go on to check my group and see notifications for other groups. I wanted to check them. The worst part was always that one post I could see next to my notifications. It took a lot of willpower not to read it.<\/p>\n

There was one post in particular that I started to read, caught myself, and then stopped. It sounded important and I wanted to know what it said. Problem was, I had no idea when it was originally posted. I also didn\u2019t want to go through the whole, \u201cI\u2019m doing this story for Nexus<\/i> and I accidentally read half the post…\u201d Also, my friend who made the post probably would\u2019ve laughed at me and told me to check back when the experiment was over.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I did sort of cheat with Facebook. I went on to grab some photos from 2012 to use on the website I built for Digital Communications. In September I lost a couple of hundred photos due to a damaged hard drive. Finding them in the cloud was taking too long. I knew exactly where they were on Facebook. There was no scrolling or posting. I knew the photos were in an album on my profile.<\/p>\n

I used YouTube without even thinking about it. I wouldn\u2019t have survived Digital Communications without videos on how to use Illustrator. But does YouTube count as social media? The capacity to interact with content creators exists, so I lean toward yes. There was a small discussion about this but no consensus. I only used YouTube for school.<\/p>\n

Something I hadn\u2019t thought about in my predictions that should\u2019ve been obvious was battery life. My phone battery lasts way longer\u2014two to three days, depending on how much music I\u2019m playing\u2014when I\u2019m not using social media.<\/p>\n

By day three I was already missing Twitter. In the fall semester, Digital Journalism was taught by the editor of Capital Daily<\/i>. We had talked on Twitter before school started. I told him about this feature. He responded by chuckling and asking how it was going. He knew the answer without really asking\u2014awful. I had lost my ability to keep in touch with the journalists I had built relationships with across Canada. I felt out of the loop. Some major events were happening. Two journalists I respected were being targeted with death threats. One of those journalists was being threatened with a libel suit by another journalist over a quote retweet. Before logging off Twitter more people were being threatened. I also quote-tweeted some of that journalist\u2019s tweets. Was she going to threaten me?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FOMO was setting in. With only a few more days of school left, I dug in and worked on my assignments. Then, on day seven, I noticed an analytic report in my email. There were 185 negative tweets toward my account. How that happened after a week of not tweeting I don\u2019t know. What they said, I never checked. I\u2019m a controversial person on Twitter; many people dislike me. But it was new territory to have that many negative tweets in one day. Especially considering it had been a week since my last tweet. But then something interesting happened: after I shrugged this off, my FOMO cleared up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once I was done with school and had more time on my hands, I started to miss Twitter again and was yearning for TikTok. They\u2019ve been my main source of entertainment lately. My prediction of binge-watching TV was only partially correct. I went down a rabbit hole of documentaries starting with docs about Instagram and TikTok.<\/p>\n

The Instagram documentary was interesting but only because there were faces to names. I didn\u2019t really learn anything new. The coolest part was seeing the person who invented the hashtag. I can be a nerd and hashtags were my thing for a long time.<\/p>\n

TikTok was a real eye-opener. I\u2019ll admit, I didn\u2019t know much about TikTok. It started when I was getting out of social-media marketing. I thought it was for younger people. When my friends started sending me TikToks I joined to see what it was all about. All I really knew was that it was owned by a Chinese company.<\/p>\n

What interested me most was how the algorithm worked (again: I am a nerd). The biometric feedback running the algorithm was unnerving. Through the camera, the app analyzes responses to videos to determine what content to push. For example, if you smile at cat videos, TikTok knows to send more cat videos. Frown at dog videos and a user gets fewer dog videos. So, being off social media for two weeks meant\u2014maybe\u2014two weeks of a company not watching me through my camera.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Camosun College Communications chair Lois Fernyhough says that privately owned newspapers used to be more common and they were politically motivated. Bias in British newspapers is still more prominent, with right wing versus left wing and pro-labour versus pro-union. If a person only subscribes to one newspaper they\u2019ve effectively put themself into an echo chamber of that newspaper\u2019s bias.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no way you can get away from bias, and people are going to consume the news that suits their perspectives,\u201d says Fernyhough. \u201cAnd maybe the echo chamber is a little bit more pronounced and obvious and in your face now, with digital media and social media, but I would say it\u2019s been an echo chamber facet of humans for centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Traditional media has adapted to the social-media landscape. With the 24-hour news cycle, stories can be pushed to online readers as they happen. With some current events, the press is getting information at the same time as the public because it\u2019s all going straight to social media. For example, during the snowstorm this past Christmas, BC Transit, the BC government, and BC Ferries were all posting updates directly to Twitter.<\/p>\n

Despite having the CBC and CTV News apps, I wasn\u2019t getting all the information Twitter was getting. My son almost left for the bus stop to his dad\u2019s because I missed the tweet from BC Transit saying buses weren\u2019t running. I would\u2019ve ended the social-media break then but I didn\u2019t have plans to go anywhere, and my son\u2019s dad planned to pick him up, so I didn\u2019t see the need. CBC and CTV News livestream provincial government press conferences through their apps. I was still getting those notifications to stay somewhat informed.<\/p>\n

Social media has caused a rise in \u201ccitizen journalists.\u201d News is now being reported by people who aren\u2019t formally trained in journalism. The barrier to entry into citizen journalism is low, especially with social media. All that\u2019s needed is a cellphone or computer and an internet connection.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Being critical media consumers and questioning the sources of information has become increasingly important. Fernyhough says that it\u2019s important to know the source, if it\u2019s credible, if a website is real, if a research organization is real, and, if so, whether it\u2019s right- or left-leaning. Digital media consumers should be asking the journalistic questions of who, what, when, where, and why.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also another consideration\u2014the chosen platform. Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said that the medium is the message. That holds true with social media as much as it did with traditional media outlets back in the \u201960s.<\/p>\n

Today, there are more mediums with the various social-media platforms. Each platform has different characteristics and delivers messages in a variety of ways. A message on Twitter has to be more succinct than it does on Facebook. Instagram is a better platform for photos. Tiktok has videos for GenZ to Boomers (yes, Boomers are there too). Therefore, media literacy should consider, \u201cWhy this platform?\u201d Content creators pick a platform for a purpose. Knowing that purpose can influence the message.<\/p>\n

McLuhan also believed that TV was going to ruin society. That\u2019s not a unique theory in communications; novels were once considered frivolous. Today, people argue that social media has been bad for society. Camosun chair of Social Sciences Peter Ove refers to this as moral panic: when there\u2019s no evidence of real harm yet societal values focus on the negatives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019ve been back on social media I\u2019ve wondered if the break changed the way I use social media. Short answer: not really.<\/p>\n

When it comes to Facebook use, I feel like I\u2019m making up for lost time on my meme posting. It\u2019s hard to tell because I\u2019ll find a bunch of memes, save them, and post them sporadically throughout the day so I don\u2019t annoy my friends. Not all the memes end up getting posted.<\/p>\n

I have slowed down with Twitter. Not because of the break, though. I had real-life issues due to the snowstorm and my health. Debating the latest issues with misinformed tweeps just made me angry.<\/p>\n

Saying I wouldn\u2019t miss Snapchat was short-sighted. For years I\u2019ve used Snapchat to stay in touch with a friend in California. Because I didn\u2019t warn him of the departure from social media, he sent a message that sat unread for nine days. This was highly unusual for me. He was very concerned about it. I had to explain everything and apologize.<\/p>\n

The amount I use Instagram and Pinterest hasn\u2019t changed. I did leave that Discord server I never engaged on. Tiktok, however: that\u2019s changed. I spend more time there and comment a lot more. I\u2019ve joined livestreams. Soon I\u2019ll get back to doing videos. What\u2019s cool is the increased number of Canadian content creators in my feed.<\/p>\n

Whenever I hear about friends taking social-media breaks they claim social media is toxic. To a certain extent, I agree. There are people on social media who say things that they wouldn\u2019t normally say in person. Manners and decorum seem to be non-existent in comment sections. But is that social media or people?<\/p>\n

Ove suggests a perspective that social media enables us to connect in a different way. For better or for worse, technology has revolutionized dating, for example. It\u2019s easier to connect with more people in a shorter period of time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think sometimes, those distinctions between real conversations and online conversations, they are reactionary,\u201d says Ove. \u201cThey\u2019re someone who has, rather than looking at evidence around the effective conversations, they\u2019re making assumptions about what these devices are doing to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

How we converse with each other made me think of my friend in South Africa. We\u2019ve never met in person but WhatsApp has allowed us to have video chats. Ove pointed out that she was like an old-school pen pal. The difference is technology has allowed us to be modern-day pen pals in real-time. I\u2019ve seen animals in Africa on a nature reserve during video calls. She\u2019s had tours of Victoria.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Social media has been accused of being a distraction. But is that the fault of the apps or the person? I\u2019ve spent two or three hours on WhatsApp talking to my friends in Australia and South Africa instead of doing homework. Can I blame WhatsApp? What if I said I spent two or three hours talking to friends in person? Would that change the answer?<\/p>\n

\u201cSo [we] have to define to figure out what actually is the problem here with social media that we need to address and not bring in other issues, which are the moral panic,\u201d says Ove. \u201cAnd there\u2019s a lot of, I think, finger pointing.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, was I able to do it? Did I survive two weeks off social media? Yes. But was the break beneficial? No. During the last week of school and during exams, I could see how taking a break from social media is definitely helpful. But even then, a full break isn\u2019t even necessary. Turning off notifications and exercising self-control is what\u2019s really important.<\/p>\n

Maybe it is about the people, not the apps, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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