I think about how bad it is, how harmful for humanity as a whole (this could be an entire blog post all on its own, actually), how my kids aren’t allowed on it now and how I wish I could keep them from ever being on it. I think about how invasive it is, how pervasive it is. I think it could be a major part of our downfall.
I also think about my own social media accounts and how I might be perceived and how I should act and what I could do to drive engagement and widen my audience and how much it bothers me that I don’t know how to do those things well.
I wish I didn’t have to worry about social media at all. When I was 9 and first dreamed of being an author someday, it never could have occurred to me that something like social media would even exist, much less how important it would feel or how many other authors I know feel like they have to constantly be able to market themselves. I worry over ways I could do social media better even though I know I’m not very good at that sort of thing. I imagine quitting it entirely, and then I fret about how if I quit social media I won’t be doing everything I possibly can to try to make my career successful. And by that logic am I already not doing everything I possibly can? Because I could probably research how to get better at social media if I could just force myself to engage with it properly.
But what’s worse than all that, lately, is that now that I have books to promote, I catch myself subconsciously treating time I’ve spent on my socials as if it was productive time. This is especially noteworthy when there’s a sale or when I have an event coming up. I can spend hours on Canva trying to make the best possible images to post to Instagram to promote my work, and by the time I’ve wrapped it up and made my posts, I’ll have used my entire early morning writing time on it. This should feel bad to me, but instead I’ll get up from my writing chair feeling as if I’ve done something productive. That’s an awful development, the kind of mindset that will make it way harder for me to be actually for-real productive with my limited free time. And I didn’t even really consciously realize until pretty recently that this shift in my outlook had even happened.
If I did finally tell myself something like, “Hmm, my Instagram and BlueSky accounts aren’t going to move the needle much, I’m just going to deactivate them” … I mean, I’d just reactivate them in a week. I’d do it mostly because social media is designed to be as addictive as possible and I’m not immune to its malignant allure, but also because there’s part of me that keeps treating it like I’m a kid again trying to figure out how to “be popular.”
And wow, that’s a mindset I have already grown out of once, over the course of my entire teens and early twenties, and now I have to do it again? Sigh. Well, at least it’ll be easier this time. I’m not going to delete my accounts, but starting right now I’m also going to try to stop worrying if I miss a trend that would’ve been perfect for talking about my book, I’m going to try to stop treating social media like something vital and important, and I’m going to try to not think about the apps at all when I’m not actively using them (I think this will be the most challenging but I’ve gotta try). Making shouting-about-my-book posts isn’t something I need to be stressing myself out over like this, it’s a task to add to my checklist, a task to find a way to manage just like any other chore. Maybe if I think of it like that—if I internally split “social media” as a category into two separate things (the Chore of Making Book-Marketing Posts on one hand and, on the other hand what it was always supposed to be, a fun little way to keep in touch with people)—I’ll be able to engage with it in a less unhealthy, less unproductive way. (I can’t in honesty say “in a healthy, productive way” because I believe that there is not really a healthy way to be on any social media site but again, that’s a whole-ass rant all on its own.)
Wish me luck…