My love/hate relationship with Facebook*

(*and any other social media sites)

Good morning to you on this fine sunny May morning as we start another week of the new “norm”. My main job is on hold, my coaching job has moved to Zoom and I’m sitting here planning the school week for my two children. As you will know from my last blog, we’ve got a little system in place, and so far so good. So I can leave them to their own devices for a few moments whilst I write to you.

I don’t think you need any background introduction to Facebook and the others. If you don’t know what they are by now, how are you even reading my blog? I’ve been on Facebook since about 2009, I’m sure that was only a couple of years ago, but I stand to be corrected. There have been times when I’ve spent hours reading through posts, liking and loving the things that peope write, laughing at their funnies and crying at their woes. I’ve never been a big fan of poking, to be honest I think it’s a bit rude. I’d much rather wave than poke!

During times where big shit is going on, that’s when Facebook changes. It becomes political, people take sides, and if you post your own opinion, you can get shot down and publicly flailed, named and shamed. This is where Facebook and the other sites go so very, very wrong. This is where people think it’s ok to hide behind their keyboards and post their thoughts, based on no fact in most cases, push others to agree with them and bash those who don’t.

I think the biggest problem with posting your personal opinion on Facebook, much like listening to a certain reporter or reading articles from a certain journalist is that this is personal, and in more cases than not, the opinion is based on the words or actions of someone else. This then becomes a blame attack, where you might be lightly disagreeing with someone’s individual actions, but the next person will take it to the next level.

Keep posting cute pictures, funny memes and the view from your socially distanced walk. I love seeing those. It makes us smile, it makes us want to share them and temporary forget what else is going on in the world. I love reading about what you’ve been doing in lockdown, where you’ve visited, and if you post about the stresses of home schooling, I can do my best to help, sympathise or just acknowledge what you’re going through.

But start telling me what the government has done wrong, what they should have done better, or how the world is ending because someone in the Daily Mail said so, and I’m so close to unfriending you.

I know this is personal opinion and we have the option to believe whatever we want to read, but seriously guys, if you’re going to repost something, check your facts. Back up your data and treat it like a university assignment. If you submitted something in class for a History paper that had no reference, no back-up and no facts related to it, what would your teacher grade you? Think of me ( and the other intelligent people on Facebook, as there are quite a lot of them) as teachers, marking your work and grading your life based on your writings. Would you stand up at speakers corner and preach to all those socially distanced ears about your view on how Coronavirus is transferred from one person to the next (assuming you’re not actually a scientist or doctor at this stage). You might answer yes, but people will question you, test you and put you on the spot that you’ve already put yourself on. Now you might be super confident and stand there passing on your views, but people will challenge you, and in reality if you can’t back up what you’re saying, your audience will either get bored of you and walk off, or slam you for not providing the information they are asking.

So the big question is, why do it on Facebook? The answer is simple, you can write what you want, answer the questions you want and if it all get’s too heated, you can simply delete your post. But what you might not realise you’re doing is building emotion in other people, and for some who don’t agree with you, but are friends with you and therefore don’t want to challenge (or maybe they know your facts are lacking, but don’t have the facts themselves to confront) you. This emotion can range from mild annoyance, to anxiety and panic attacks. Have you ever really thought how Facebook emotionally unbalances people? And when you name people who you don’t agree with, what do you think you’re doing by publicly attacking them? You’re opening up the floodgates for other people to attack them, some more agressively than you. You’re attacking real people with real lives, families and feelings. They might be better known than you but they still are people who can get damaged.

So really, my love/hate relationship isn’t actually with Facebook. My love/hate relationship is with people, and people’s blaming of other people, taking other unfactual reports as verbatim and sharing false information (fake news). And I urge you people, please think before you type, like you would before you speak. I’m friends with people who I know I could have a sensible and grown up conversation with. I’m not friends with reporters who have a biased to what they want you to read. Unfortunately, not everyone on Facebook can read a post they don’t agree with and ignore it. People will take that information, dwell on that information and react. And the reaction is what leads to more actions that in turn affect more people. People who become depressed, angry, hurt and bitter. People who think you’ve done the research for them and therefore don’t need to do it themselves. People who might react in a more physical way and take their emotion out on the next person they see in the street.

So people, to sum up today, whilst you’re posting for everyone to Be Kind, think about your own actions and think about your audiences. Are you being kind too? To end, here’s a funny one to keep you entertained