Down the rabbit hole
With the decrease of face to face interaction, my online presence has increased. I reached a point at the beginning of this year when I considered shutting down all of my social accounts, news aggregators and going offline. It was taking me a lot of my time and energy to sort and go through information and decide what was worth taking in. I felt a lot of what I was getting was full of hatred and I was constantly exposed to clickbait.
It’s easy for our mind to focus on negative thoughts, especially during a pandemic. Sharing our mind is easier than ever before. Endorphins are produced with every like we get when we do so, incentivizing the behavior. When there’s not much to do outside, we are tempted to pick up our phones to keep on scrolling, liking, sharing and responding. The result is not always giving what’s right more attention. Negative content gets amplified by the anonymity social platforms provide and the immediate effect it has on our emotions. Algorithms following our most vile instincts in a quest for commercial benefits reflect a society like a mirror that we don’t always like to look at.
After a few days of online detachment and deep reflection, I decided to go the opposite way and dedicate more time to improve my digital life. Adjusting to the environment and taking more control. Find below some of the tips that are helping me make my online experience better:
Diversify and curate your sources of information. Don’t become a victim of your online feed and constantly seek for new sources of information. It does take effort and discipline to access what is different and it is a learning mechanism. Be curious and scout not only what’s popular but what’s available and of quality. Surrounding ourselves with people who think the same and have similar ideas is the best way to feel reassured and not challenged. Make time to contrast those sources. Don’t take information and headlines for granted. Reduce your tolerance for misinformation and toxicity. Remove incendiary sources and people from your online community and sphere of influence.
Be graceful and consider the position of power. Relationships, group and organizational dynamics are complex. Hate speech has the ability to shut down the voice of minority groups. It harms idea generation. Power inherently provides a higher sense of accountability and responsibility to the ones that hold it. The internet acts as an equalizing factor. We shouldn’t dehumanize others for the sake of debate. The range of speech is nuanced and the understanding of power and privilege differs. And there’s always many sides to the same story.
Respond with constraint and brains. In a world that demands fast results and expects fast reactions, practicing constraint will not always be well received. We feel there’s certain expectation to prove a point in front of others and that makes it appealing to go for the quickest way to raise attention; that’s usually to disagree and criticize. Being an observer of our emotions and not a quick reactor is hard. Finding faults outside in what others say and do comes easier. It’s certainly more comfortable than investing time to improve ourselves. It takes certain detachment and restraint to pause and do some introspection before responding. Emotions are neither good nor bad. They just are. What can be good and bad are our reactions to them.
Contribute with a positive spin. When creating content or sharing other people’s, let’s ask ourselves: does this contribute or infuriate? We know how negative thoughts can dominate our mind if we let them. Let’s create a more positive environment for ideas to thrive. Providing with a different perspective and debating from a place of camaraderie instead of a place of condescension.
Take a break from the screen. Digital fatigue is real. Take some calls without video whilst going for a walk. Put your phone down. Create habits in your day that don’t require for you to have a screen in front of you. Easy morning routines like drinking water and a hot drink when you wake up and taking some time before you grab your phone. Read a book and listen to meditation before going to bed. Try a complete online detox for a few days when going on vacations.
Our negative thoughts transcend out of our own insecurities and fears. Let’s nurture the information we receive and be more in control of it, be graceful and humanize others, respond with brains and contribute with more positivity. We’ll improve ourselves. And we’ll make everyone’s digital experiences better and more enjoyable.