Social Media Detox Day 2



Even though I'm not very far along in this journey it's actually getting easier. I for sure thought I'd be struggling without scrolling my Facebook and Instagram feeds to start and end my days. But it's actually pretty freeing. For instance, I was out to dinner and actually had conversations, found out what was going on in people's lives and even paid attention to the basketball game on at the bar we were at. I think what I'm starting to realize is that it's nice not to be tethered by our devices. It almost brings back this state of normalcy, back to how things use to be.





So this morning I was scrolling through the New York Times and came across an article about 'Teen Vogue' writer Lauren Duca. The piece talks about the aftermath of Duca's article where she went after then, President Elect Donald Trump for 'gaslighting' the American people; a type of psychological manipulation intended to make people doubt their own perceptions.  And while the content of both articles are fascinating what caught my attention, (and this was not intentional) was a part where the NYT article mentioned Duca's social media use. In the piece where the Times follows Duca's evening going on stage at the Upright Citizens Brigade to do a little improv where she says,

“I could tweet the word peanut and they would be like, ‘Don’t you know that, like, my son’” is allergic!"
The article goes on to describe the writer on stage 'clutching her iPhone in her right hand like a security blanket.' Ducca also states in the article that,
"The stakes are higher" because she has a lot more Twitter followers now than she did six weeks ago."

The Times' piece also goes on to say that, 'Duca couldn’t resist sneaking a peek at her phone, noticing a shout-out on Twitter from a supportive audience member. Ms. Duca hit the retweet button and returned to the stage.'

Alright, so before I go any further with this I just want to be clear that I'm not coming down on Ducca AT ALL or the Times' description of the evening. What I found fascinating was the combo platter of the two. Here's this freelance writer who's coming into her own as writer and really seems to have found her voice but behind that confidence there's still this fear that exist of what she says on social media. So I guess the point I'm making with this is the irony in the idea that something that was invented to give us a voice online also gives us certain insecurities about sharing that voice on there. 

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