Some thoughts on the impact that some of the more negative aspects of social media have on your wellbeing, some tips on how to lessen the impact and a few promises about our content.
I was lightly doomscrolling the other day on Facebook and a click-bait article sucked me in. I have a developed a process for dealing with click-bait: I look in the comments first and usually that gives me enough to see whether it's worth disappearing down the rabbit hole. If I'd stuck to that I would have been safe, but I didn't, because the bait was so juicy and aligned to my beliefs. So I just dived in.
Once in I was literally bombarded with pop ups, videos and adverts to an overwhelming level. But I persisted, swimming through the cesspit of advertising in the hope I would find that little island of truth that validated my beliefs. The article was hard to read because of the distractions, but the payload was so compelling and I was fully committed. If there had been a video as promised I'd have gone there as well, but there wasn't.
When I surfaced after maybe 2 minutes (but it felt longer), I went back to my process and read the comments and a couple of things became clear:
Fair play, I'd been hooked and reeled in.
