I believe that people love social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and TikTok. because they are a DISTRACTION. I don’t mean a physical distraction – such as when person interrupts you from doing your job. It is the distraction of social media has become the “excuse” to be passive about current events and even open the door for people to not care about “front page news”. We have become a world that just doesn’t know the difference between “REAL BREAKING NEWS” and “REALITY TV NEWS”. In my “humble opinion” this phenomenon happens because we are victims to the social media magnet that causes our brain to be DISTRACTED!
I invite you to dive in to this topic a bit deeper with me. Here are some examples from “news” items for the week of January 20, 2020.
News Item 1. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (aka Harry and Megan) are now “out of the senior royal family” and have moved to Canada. Good for them. I wish them, and Canada – much success.
News Item 2. A new trending hashtag (#DollyPartonChallenge) is causing a frenzy. Yes, my friends are uploading FOUR QUAD photos of ourselves with the captions FACEBOOK/ INSTAGRAM/ LINKEDIN and TINDER. I was distracted. I made one. See below. (*Blushing*)
News Item 3. Betty White had a birthday and we all have to post our well-wishes to our favorite Golden Girl! (Newsflash- she won’t read them.)
News Item 4. Eli Manning is retiring from football. (Newsflash #2 – some of us thought he already did.)
By the way, there also were two OTHER ” little” stories that seemed to get a few mentions…
1) The Corona Virus from China is rapidly spreading and causing much concern among the travel and medical communities. There is NO CURE, NO VACCINE and this is SERIOUS. To read about this ACTUAL NEWS STORY go here
Compound this breaking news with another “minor” story….
2) The Senate is holding impeachment hearings and there is chaos happening in Washington DC. When Nixon, even Clinton had offenses that warranted Senate hearings – there was nothing but these proceedings on TV and the radio 24/7. This was NEWS. The person who held the highest office in the United States was being put on trial. This was a BIG DEAL. I think it is worthy of a mention and way for you to learn more. PBS has great non-biased coverage.
What if you don’t want ANY NEWS on your timeline. You just want “rainbows and unicorns”? (Or selfies, puppy photos and baby videos) Well.. you can be distracted by these “happy posts” –
Below you will find a popular post that has made the rounds for a few months (or more). Notice the key to this post is to end negativity. (Yes, I posted photos of Bayla… I buckled under peer pressure. But, I also balanced that photo with a tweet about current events and the earthquake LA area had last night.)
I’m asking people to join the challenge of posting a picture of their dog. Only one photo, no description. The goal is to flood FB with positive dog pictures instead of negativity. Please copy the text into your status, post one photo of your dog and watch for some great photos! (Dog friends, jump right in.) ❤️
Facebook January 2020
I close with these cautionary words… Don’t live in a social media cocoon. Learn about the world around you. Locally. Nationally. Globally. And learn the difference between “news” that is meant as a distraction and focusing on real “breaking news”.
Thank you for reading.
