Assignment 2: I didn't like anything on Facebook for several days

Out of the available options for this assignment, I chose what I felt was the least possible of the evils and did not "like" anything on Facebook between Thursday and Tuesday.  The first thing that was apparent was that, much as I had imagined, it was very difficult not to "like" things, and in fact I had to "unlike" several things to not violate the rules of the assignment, because it is such an ingrained reaction.  Because I am such an active Facebook presence, I knew all of my friends would be alarmed if I suddenly stopped obsessively liking their posts, so I posted an alert to let everyone know what was going on.  While in truth I doubt anyone would have paid that much attention to my lack of "liking" things, I thought it was interesting how disgruntled and offended that some people were at the idea that "liking" could be proscribed.  This stuff is serious.

                Because of the way I often use social media, on the run for a few seconds or a minute here or there, I don't comment near as much as I "like", and when I was not allowed to "like," I found myself feeling uncomfortable and disengaged a lot.  I didn't have time to comment and I couldn't like anything; without the ability to interact, what was the point? So I actually ended up not being on Facebook nearly as much.  And the benefit of that, not at all surprisingly, was that I was much more engaged with my friends and family who were actually present.  And that, also not surprisingly, had the benefit of improving those relationships. 

                What I took away from this experiment, as a learning experience, is that while I believe social media does add a certain dimension of quality to my life and relationships, I also think to a much greater extent, it detracts significantly from my overall quality of life and the quality of parent/friend/sister/student that I can be.  While being relatively unengaged for a few days on Facebook didn't appear to damage those relationships, it did noticeably improve my "real life" relationships.  Ideally I would find a balance between those two, so that I could continue to interact on social media without detracting from everyday life.  However, if I'm not able to do that, I would consider finding a way to disengage from Facebook so that I can better focus my energies on my priorities. 

                I might have more to say about this, but I have to go take a Facebook quiz about which Frozen character I am…

Assignment 1 - Three Interesting Tweets

             There were a lot of Tweets that I found engaging and interesting, but I picked three to comment on.  One was from The Onion, and it was a photo meme of a prison guard that says, “Death Row Guard Has Always Had Soft Spot For The Innocent Ones.” I found it amusing, and I like the way The Onion takes serious issues and puts them in a “dark humor” light.  This meme takes the question of guilt and innocence, and the suspicion of culpability of law enforcement in false guilt cases, and makes it something that it’s okay to laugh about, just for a moment, and uses humor as a way to bring these issues into the public consciousness.  I retweeted that one, so others could laugh and then maybe think seriously, as well.

                Another Tweet that I retweeted was from Men’s Health Magazine.  This one was a link to an article titled “15 Instant Ways to Make Yourself Happier.”  The tweet drew my attention because, like most people, I enjoy being happy, and anything I can do to improve that is interesting to me.  The article  was a list of practical, simple actions that can improve a person’s mood.  I appreciated that the suggestions were unique; there were several that made sense but with which I was not familiar.  Also, each suggestion included the scientific explanation behind it, which differentiates this article from many opinion pieces on self-improvement.

                The third Tweet that I found especially informative was from Reuters, and it was a link to an article about the Ebola outbreak, titled “U.N. says $600 million needed to tackle Ebola as deaths top 1,900.”  The Tweet drew my attention because it was about the Ebola outbreak, which I have been following on and off, and feel is a significant world issue right now that can get lost in all the war outbreaks that are occurring.  The article was well-written and informative, covering briefly the history of the outbreak, the steps being taken to combat it, and problems that are being experienced in that effort.