questions to challenge your social media habits
from how to be a woman on the internet - a tool to help you sort through your internet habits and let go of what’s not serving you
In a recent newsletter, I shared a simple reminder that will hopefully make our relationships to social media a bit more satisfactory: Focus less on what “does well” and focus more on what you want to post. Many, like myself, often complain about social media, but I think if we check in with ourselves often to see how we’ve been using it and the ways we can change how we’re using it for the better, maybe social media will be something we can enjoy again — or, to take it one step further, something we can give ourselves permission to use less.
At the end of 2019, I was pretty unsatisfied with how I was using social media. I found myself resenting it, as I was posting things I didn’t care much about and leaving out parts of me I found more interesting. As someone who generally loves social media — who pretty much always has — I wanted to have a better relationship with it. So I wrote out a list of questions for me to reflect on and answer that would help inform how I’d use social media for the upcoming year. I asked myself what I like and dislike sharing and consuming, what I want to stand for, what I want to share more of, and what my goals are, both personally and professionally, to name a few.
While those questions helped guide my process on sharing on Instagram as a content creator, the set of questions Ford and I came up with for How to be a Woman on the Internet are much more general and serve as a tool for anyone who uses social media in any capacity. The 21 questions are encouraged to be used as thought and conversation starters to help you sort through your internet habits and let go of what’s not serving you. They can be used as journal prompts for self-reflection, or things to contemplate during alone time or to chat about with friends.
Below are a few of my favorite questions (with short answers).
View the full list of 21 questions here.
What parts of yourself come across on social media? What parts of yourself don’t come across on social media?
The parts of myself that come across on social media: my sense of style, my hobbies and interests (reading, traveling, writing), my work (photography, social media), the places I frequent, the causes I care about, and the way I see and capture my surroundings.
The parts that don’t come across on social media: my sense of humor, my personality overall, those I hold the most dear. In another question, we ask, how does that serve you? How does it not serve you? And I think it serves me well, for the most part. While I feel I may come off cold or boring or impersonal through my Instagram, I’m more okay with that than having to try to showcase my personality in a way that feels unnatural or uncomfortable to me or sharing something personal that I may later regret.
My friend Neada said something that really stuck with me, that I hope to apply to my social media use moving forward. She said, In terms of creation, a sustainable level is when one might feel naturally inclined or have a clear intention around sharing. I have been told by so many people that I need to share more intimate moments of my life online, but I want to save those — that part of me — for those who really know me.
Are there any internet habits you’re hoping to break this year? If so, why?
An internet habit I hoped to break this year and have succeeded in so far is limiting the mindless scrolling. I talked a bit about this in a previous newsletter, but I wanted to spend less time online overall and the first step was to avoid that endless scroll. I used to have this obsessive need to view every Instagram post on my feed, quickly scrolling until the very end each day until I got to the last post I saw. I didn’t enjoy it and didn’t find the content I was consuming all that interesting, but it was a habit formed because it was something I had been doing since the early days of the app. Since then, I’ve followed a lot more people who post a lot more content, resulting in a lot more screen time.
To combat this, I created a private account, following a very small amount of people, and allowed myself to scroll until the end of that one. Now when I’m on my main account, I no longer take part in that endless scroll and have released that unnecessary need to see every post. I’ve taken a similar approach to Twitter — I removed the app from my phone entirely and make sure to log out each time in order to avoid mindlessly logging in and scrolling multiple times a day.
Now that I’ve limited my time doing that, I’ve freed up time to do other things: getting more sleep, planning fun things for Seen Library, reading, spending more time with my stray-turned-housecat and being more present in general.
What kind of person do you hope to be when you go out into the world every day? How does the internet help you show up as that person? How does it get in the way?
When I go out in the world every day, I hope to be curious, kind, compassionate, and present. I think the internet helps me show up as that person in a number of ways. Showing me new travel destinations, restaurants, activities or volunteer opportunities that I can take part in that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Sharing stories and perspectives that help me understand others in a meaningful way. Providing resources and information that encourage me to be more mindful and intentional in various situations.
But just as there are a number of ways it helps me, there are just as many ways that it gets in the way. As Rachel talks about in her audio interview, we often curate our offline experiences based on things we find online, which ultimately limits our world and discourages true curiosity. The self-righteousness of the internet that encourages gotcha! moments and unproductive online discourse, all of which I’ve unfortunately contributed to myself at some points, don’t exactly breed kindness and compassion. The addictive nature of social media apps with the endless scrolls and countless points of contact — comments, DMs, texts, emails — take away from real-life moments with real-life people.
While I’m not yet the person I want to be when I go out into the world, I hope that by checking in with myself and my social media use often, I at least get a bit closer to being that person.