MacGregor EMC - MacGregor

Social media (which functions by trying to keep us engaged on its platform in order to show us more advertisements) can inadvertently lead us to think in a few very unhealthy ways. It can lead us to believe the world around us is beyond hope. It can cause us to see other people as one-dimensionally terrible. And it can cause us, when we think of the future, to be filled only with dread.

And while a good first step to combating this mindset is to scale back the amount of social media you ingest, constant exposure to this kind of worldview has a way of seeping into us, to the point that it doesn’t just go away when the source does. The impact of negative thought patterns tends to linger, after all, and sometimes that means it will take time and positive and conscious effort in order to change those patterns.

And so, if you find these kinds of negative thought patterns hanging over your head often, even after you have turned Facebook off, here are three suggestions that have helped me:

1.       If you struggle with thinking that the world today is beyond hope, try getting involved locally.

It is hard going, feeling powerless in the face of problems that seem insurmountable. Yet this is exactly the kind of feeling social media excels at instilling into us. You may notice, if you think to look for it, that the kind of problems you see most often on your Facebook feed tend to be those on the larger side of the scale:  wars, economic woes, federal or provincial politics, corruption. These big problems are plastered everywhere on social media, and while they are important to know about for when the next election rolls around, they are also the kind of problems that, on the individual level, there isn’t much to be done to confront them. As such, when they are the most common kind of issue you spend your time thinking about and engaging with, it is easy to come away with a feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness.

To this day I remember something an old High School teacher taught me in a World Issues class I took in the twelfth grade. ‘The closer to home you look, the more likely something is to impact your life directly.’ Onto this I would like to add that the closer to home a problem is, also the more likely you will be able to help address it. While the big problems of the world are important, the simple truth is that very rarely will any of them impact you half as much as will seemingly simple local things like, for example, how the municipality you live in decides to spend its budget for that year.

So, do you feel powerless and like the world is beyond hope? Get involved locally. There are always many community organizations, charities, not-for-profits, and the church looking for people to help out. Get involved locally and you will see that, far from being powerless, one person can actually do an awful lot when it comes to making their life, and the lives of the people they care about, better. There is little in this world that is more empowering than realizing you have the power to make the world around you into a better place.

2.       If you think of all people as terrible, try hanging out more often with people you disagree with.

Let me ask you a question. What side of the political spectrum do you lean toward? Alright, now another question. What is your favourite season of the year? Another, what is your favourite song and movie? A final one. Who was the first person you had a crush on in grade school?

Chances are, you can answer all those questions without much of a problem about yourself; likely about many of your friends and family, as well. Now here is a fun game:  picture someone that you absolutely cannot stand. Everything they say and do just gets under your skin. Now answer me this:  how many of those same types of personal questions can you answer about them?

Chances are, if you primarily know this person from social media, apart from the things about them that really drive you crazy, you likely don’t actually know many of the other personal answers. This isn’t your fault. Social media does an excellent job of making us feel like we are getting to know the whole of someone, while in reality we are actually only getting to know the part of them that we engage with most.