Diana Adams is one of a growing number of social media junkies who have experimented with taking some time off from the web. She describes “hitting a wall” with her social media use and online relationships, and taking 8 days off from the net so that she could put things in perspective.
What’s refreshing about the resulting blog post, 6 Ways To Overcome Social Media Burnout, is that she’s not preaching withdrawal from the web. Rather, she outlines some useful practices — like keeping in touch with phone friends, and making sure not to eat at your computer — that can keep social media use from becoming compulsive and dysfunctional.
But what I really love is her 6th point: “Your Social Media Friends are Real Friends, Really!” As she writes:
You will read that when you are feeling burned out; you should start to focus on your “real life.” I hear that all the time. It’s such segregation really. There seems to be this theory of real life vs. social media life.
Just like at other times in our history we have had issues with segregation, I think this is a backwards and messed up way to view things which only contributes to the problem because it encourages a feeling of “us” and “them” instead of “togetherness.”
Our online friends are just that, online. However, that does not mean they are second-class friends that are irrelevant in our “real life.” This attitude, to me, just shows that social media is still in the infant stages.
There are real people behind those avatars (most of them anyway), and the relationships you build are real. Social media, in whatever form it continues to evolve into, is an extension of our “real life,” not a separate entity. My social media friends are not the red headed stepchildren of my life, which is how most articles on this topic will spin it.
My Twitter friends are especially very close to me, and I love them very much. Knowing that these relationships are real, and you can treat them as such, will bring a lot of happiness to your life which will help you overcome this burnout syndrome.
Like Diana, I am tired of the false dichotomy between online life and “real” life, and between online friends and “real” friends. Social media pals, it’s time for us to stand up for our own reality! Just because it’s on screen doesn’t mean it’s not real.
Alexandra,
Thank you for such a wonderful article and for referencing my article on http://www.bitrebels.com. You are a fabulous writer and I’m humbled to be on your blog. I’m going to tweet it right now! 🙂
Diana Adams
Alexandra,
Thank you for such a wonderful article and for referencing my article on http://www.bitrebels.com. You are a fabulous writer and I’m humbled to be on your blog. I’m going to tweet it right now! 🙂
Diana Adams
It also privileges the local over global, says that your relationships with the people who live a short distance from you are worth more just because you can see them face to face, which seems like an awfully big claim to me.
To reframe this, I once heard somebody say that they didn’t like the phone, that the only friendships that counted were friendships that were face to face. So the friends who lived on the other side of town, who she couldn’t see as often, those friendships were naturally inferior, to say nothing about the people who lived 50 or 100 miles away.
Maybe because I grew up with grandparents in another country, but I just don’t get it. I’ve never had all my loved ones in a single place, but that doesn’t mean that my connections to them, over aerogram, postcard, phone calls, emails, texts and tweets, are any the less real. They’re just different. And yes, there’s a lot one gets out of richer, more synchronous forms of communication, like face to face talks BUT if that was the most important factor I wouldn’t spend all day making small talk with the people I bump into and I couldn’t have a real heart to heart with the people who live far away, and I know it’s not true.
It also privileges the local over global, says that your relationships with the people who live a short distance from you are worth more just because you can see them face to face, which seems like an awfully big claim to me.
To reframe this, I once heard somebody say that they didn’t like the phone, that the only friendships that counted were friendships that were face to face. So the friends who lived on the other side of town, who she couldn’t see as often, those friendships were naturally inferior, to say nothing about the people who lived 50 or 100 miles away.
Maybe because I grew up with grandparents in another country, but I just don’t get it. I’ve never had all my loved ones in a single place, but that doesn’t mean that my connections to them, over aerogram, postcard, phone calls, emails, texts and tweets, are any the less real. They’re just different. And yes, there’s a lot one gets out of richer, more synchronous forms of communication, like face to face talks BUT if that was the most important factor I wouldn’t spend all day making small talk with the people I bump into and I couldn’t have a real heart to heart with the people who live far away, and I know it’s not true.