I’m in Melbourne. So I’m on the fly. So today I just post something I found interesting.
A new survey (conducted by a vitamin company which I don’t particularly feel compelled to mention) about stress and work/life balance says 63 per cent of us feel social media is making us stressed. And that women are feeling it more than men. And what about this:
“women feel more pressure than men to be interesting or witty in their status updates (69% vs 39%).”
Do we? Really? Or is it that we feel pressure to keep up and to keep on going. I certainly feel this. Once you enter the social media fray, you step onto a funpark ride that’s hard to get off. Further, you feel you need to keep stoking the furnace driving the ride. Otherwise…otherwise….???
I’m going to write more about this shortly. I’ll just plant the idea for now. Prop up a mirror to this relentless stoking and self-created pressure.
Coming at things from another angle. I enjoyed this column by New York Times columnist David Brookes on social media and the changing role of media in general…and for the need for content that counts. That resonates. That cuts deeper. If you blog or tweet, it’s worth a read:
“There must be room for a magazine that offers an aspirational ideal to the middle manager in the suburban office park, that offers a respite from the deluge of vapid social network chatter, that transmits the country’s cultural inheritance and its shared way of life, that separates for busy people the things that are enduring from the things that aren’t.
In the media business, as in politics, it’s important to know what year it is. It’s 2010, not 1998 or 1986.
There is an anxious seriousness in the air, waiting for an outlet.”
I agree…there’s an anxious seriousness…we’re yearning it, we’re hungry for it. We’re drawn unhealthily, compulsively, against our better judgment, into the empty dross online – the gossipy stories, the freaky pic reels. It’s understandable. We’re human. But it’s become too much. What we really want now is stuff that’s considered and taps into the care we’re all aching for.
Perhaps that’s why we stress about being interesting in our status updates???
Do you agree? Do you share this ache with me?
