pitfalls of social media

My Reaction to the Facebook Reactions {or…Use Your Words, People!}

February 25, 2016 By Michelle 18 Comments

So in case you missed it, yesterday Facebook exploded in celebratory glee over the introduction of its new emoticons, otherwise known as “Reactions,” according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. No longer do we need to feel limited by the lowly “Like” button; we now have a heart Love button, a haha Laughter button, a yay Happy button {by the way, the Yay button is only available in Spain and Ireland right now…because apparently the Spanish and Irish are a lot Yayier than the rest of us}, a surprised Wow button, a frowny Sad button and a beady-eyed Angry button.

Ever the late adopter, I posted my own reaction to the Reactions on my Facebook page:

“Am I the only one who doesn’t love the new Facebook emoticons? I have 58 toothpastes to choose from, 148 kinds of deodorant, 9,000 kinds of cereal, 14,000 television stations, and now I have 6 Facebook faces, too. It’s too much! My brain is melting! Choice overload! How about we just go back to “Like” or move on? My head is going to pop off the first time someone gives me the angry face on a status update (go ahead, try it – who is going to be the first?!) ‪#‎curmudgeonly‬ (where’s the face for that, eh?)”

Plus, there’s the fact that I know myself. I already take note of the “Likes” on my posts (oh come on, get over it, you know you do, too). I can see how this is all going to go down…

“Huh. Only four Loves. Why only four Loves? Why 47 Likes but only four Loves? Why am I worthy of Like but not Love?! For the love, where is the LOVE?!”

Or… “Hey, she gave me the Angry Beady Eyes. What did I ever do to her? What did I do to deserve the Angry Beady Eyes? Yeah? Yeah? Fine. Angry Beady Eye right back at you, babe.”

I mean seriously, I’m already a navel gazer. These six new emoticons are only going to plunge me into a whole new level of navel-gazing, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

I was mostly joking last night when I posted that status update about the new emoticons, until later, that is, when suddenly I wasn’t.

You see, I got to thinking about when I was in college. I wrote in long-hand (what, pray tell, is long hand?) to my nana and to my nana’s sister, my great aunt Mary, at least once a month – on my very own monogrammed stationery, no less. And I received letters from them in return. I still remember crouching down to open the tiny metal door of my dorm post office box and spotting the telltale dusty pink envelope, knowing my grandmother’s notepaper, with a rosebud at the top, just above the delicate script, From the Desk of Elizabeth DeRusha, was folded inside. I didn’t keep any of those letters (I got the Anti-Sentimental Gene from my dad), but I still remember how much I cherished receiving them at the time.

Now, I may sound like I am 1,009 years old for saying this, but for heaven’s sake, what have we come to with these Facebook emoticons? Your coworker posts a sentimental note on Facebook about the death of her grandfather, and you click Frowny Sad Face and move on. Your sister posts a selfie of her new haircut, you click the heart. Finito. Your BFF posts about her terrible, awful, no good, very bad day, and you click Beady Angry Eyes to signify “Grrrrr, those are the worst.” Or do you click Frowny Sad Face to demonstrate empathy? Or do you click both for good measure?

Click. Done. Scroll on. Click. Done. Scroll on.

Facebook’s new “Reactions” simply give us another excuse and another way to skate through life on vapid autopilot. They let us off the hook by allowing us to pretend we are expressing heartfelt emotion – joy, sorrow, empathy, compassion, anger– when in fact, all we’re really doing is taking the easy way out. We’re not connecting, were clicking. And clicking. And clicking. And clicking.

Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg had to say about the Reactions launch on his own Facebook timeline yesterday (by the way, did you know that Mark Zuckerberg has 52,254,708 followers? For reals. It’s practically a ticker tape!) :

“Not every moment you want to share is happy. Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating. Our community has been asking for a dislike button for years, but not because people want to tell friends they don’t like their posts [ahem, clearly Mark hasn’t visited the Christian Facebook community lately]. People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotion. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the right way to do this with our team. One of my goals was to make it as simple as pressing and holding the Like button. The result is Reactions, which allow you to express love, laughter, surprise, sadness or anger.”

I hear what you’re saying, Mark, I really do. People do want to express a broader range of emotions beyond the bland, pallid “Like.” People do want to express joy, sorrow, disappointment, empathy, compassion and anger, in real life and on Facebook. People do want to react. But there is an effective, meaningful way to do this, and it doesn’t entail simply “pressing and holding” a button.

It’s called using our words. Our powerful, eloquent, insightful, angry, sorrowful, poignant, beautiful, celebratory, life-giving words.

Words are still important, even in this Brave New World of emoticons and Reactions – especially in this Brave New World of emoticons and Reactions. In spite of what Mark Zuckerberg says about “making it comfortable” to share emotion, the truth is, sometimes emotion is uncomfortable. Grief is uncomfortable. Anger is uncomfortable. Sorrow and loneliness are uncomfortable. What we need is to learn how to sit with and in this discomfort. Words, though not always perfect, allow us to do that in a way that robotically clicking a cartoony “Reaction” never will.

Words have the power to move us to tears. Words have the power to make the hair on our arms and the back of our necks stand on end. Words have the power to make us dance, shout, curse, and cheer. Words have the power to start a movement. Words have the power to change us. Words have the power to change the world.

Words give us life and breath and love. Words are Life and Breath and Love.

God gave us words because they have the power to connect us — to help us see and hear, to know and understand one another. Words, plain and simple, are a gift.

So maybe the next time we go to click one of those emoticon faces, we can take a second to pause and remember that. Let’s remember that words are a gift we can give and receive…even on Facebook, even in this Brave New World.

{and yeah, when I post this on Facebook, you all better give me a whole lot of those hearts}

Social Media Doesn’t Define You {No Matter How Pretty the Word Pictures Are}

November 19, 2015 By Michelle 23 Comments

Yesterday I did one of those gimmicky Facebook games – I am such a sucker for gimmicky Facebook games. This one promised to create a picture comprised of the words I use most often in my Facebook posts. Cool, I thought, sign me up!

So here are my results:

I didn’t think too much of it at first. I was pleased God got in there…that seemed important for a “Christian writer.” I did, however, find it a little frightening that He was competing neck and neck with “book” and “blog.” That didn’t seem quite right.

Brad made a cameo appearance in the bottom right corner – yay, Brad! — but Luther got equal billing. Freud would have a field day with that.

Overall, it could have been worse. I was a little worried that “suckbag” or “wine” was going to end up front and center on my word picture.

I was mildly entertained by the game. Until, that is, I began to see other people’s word pictures splattered all over Facebook.

My friend Lelia’s featured the word “God” so big it looked like a billboard. I mean, GOD was practically her only word!

Another friend’s looked like she had cherry-picked All The Best Words for her picture, which was squeezed to overflowing with descriptors like “love,” “family,” “joy,” “connection,” “Jesus,” “God,” “believe” and “grateful.” Was she reading the Beatitudes every day prior to posting on Facebook?

Another friend’s was all lighthearted and fun: “birthday,” “family,” “love,” “heart,” “music,” “Christmas.” Clearly she was reading a little too much Mary Engelbriet.

I clicked back to my picture, which suddenly looked a little sparse. This was the best I could do? These were my most-used words? “Girls,” “now,” “look,” “go,” “little,” “like”…What am I, a third grader?

I looked more closely and noticed something else. My words leaned heavily toward the self-absorbed.

“I’ve”

“I’m”

“I’d”

“Need”

“Want”

Perfect.

I clicked back to my main feed and looked at some more of my friends’ and acquaintances’ word pictures:

“Love,” “people,” “good!”

“Hope,” “living,” “amazing,” “giving!”

“Happy,” “friends,” “best!”

Good grief! I have the worst words! I have the most juvenile, self-involved, self-absorbed, narcissistic words! I am a narcissist! Facebook has proved it!

There I was, my finger poised to delete my stupid Most Used Words on Facebook post from my timeline, full of shame and humiliation that my words weren’t fancy enough or Christian enough or love-thy-neighbor enough, when I stopped in my tracks.

This, my friends, is the insidious nature of social media. It fuels comparison. A click here, a click there, and before we even realize it, we’re assuming that everyone else has a prettier, more organized, more neighborly, more loving, more holy life. Social media paints a false picture of reality, and as a result, it tricks us, leaving us feeling empty, less-than and ashamed, like we don’t measure up and clearly never will.

Friends, what you post on Facebook or tweet on Twitter or pin on Pinterest or Scope on Periscope is not you. It may be a sliver of you. It may offer us a few insights into who you are and what you believe in and what you value and what you are thinking in that given moment on that given day, but it’s not a full picture of the flesh and blood unique and beautiful you that God made.

Not. Even. Close.

I almost believed it for a minute there. I almost believed that Facebook could define me based on the words I’ve used most in status updates over the past however-many-months. I almost believed that Facebook could define me period.

Luckily I remembered, at the very last second, that it’s how I live my life offline, not what I choose to post about it on social media, that defines who I am.

By the way, I tried to convince Brad to do the Most Used Words on Facebook. He refused. I think he was secretly afraid it would look like this:

Moby Dick

That Time I Dreamed about the Pope {or, How I Desire to be Known}

July 30, 2015 By Michelle 13 Comments

We’re just back from my favorite place in the world: the North Shore of Lake Superior, where we have a cabin on the edge of the lake that looks like an ocean. I’ve loved this place ever since my very first trip there with Brad more than 20 years ago.

Up on the North Shore, you can walk through a birch grove and hear nothing but the sound of the wind through the leaves, the call of a chickadee, the crunch of pebbles beneath your hiking boots.

You can underhand toss a smooth-as-butter rock into the glassy lake and watch the ripples expand further and further out until they disappear, blending into the great expanse of water that stretches as far as your eye can see.

You can leap wild and carefree with a yelp that echoes into the cavernous space, a split-second moment of blood-roiling exhilaration before the cold tomb closes over your head and you emerge sputtering and flailing.

You can sit on a boulder, your feet tucked in tight, and watch the water swirl around your fingertips as it burbles toward the thundering falls.

You can dip a paddle into strands of lakeweed wavering like snakes. You can laugh till your sides ache when your mom’s marshmallow erupts into flames and slides into the coals in one goopy glump. You can perch on the rocks and watch as day ebbs into night and the sky and the lake become one.

I love all these things about the North Shore, but on this trip, I realized there’s one thing about our cabin on the edge of Lake Superior that I love most of all:

There’s no wifi. No computer. No Dish, cable or DirectTV. On some days, depending on who knows what, there isn’t even a proper cell phone connection.

At the cabin, I am truly disconnected. For one week out of fifty-two, I let it all go – the likes and comments; the Amazon rankings; the who’s arguing about which issue and which movie star is getting divorced from whom and whose blog post went viral and whose book is coming out when and why did she get an advance copy and I didn’t and I don’t think Kate Middleton should have chosen that hat and maybe I should try to pitch the Huffington Post again and did you hear about Whitney Houston’s daughter and why did I only get 11 shares on that blog post it took me four hours to write and hey I had no idea capri pants aren’t in style anymore.

Gone. Off the radar screen entirely with nary a second thought. It all melts away, and I don’t even notice it’s gone. Until, that is, I recognize what’s slipped into its spot, what’s taken its rightful place in the forefront, in full, crystal-clear focus:

My life.

My people. My place. My real thoughts, emotions and deepest desires.

My real life.

I know, I know these things should always be first; these things should always take priority. I mean, how pathetic, right, that my online life takes precedence over my actual, real, in-the-flesh life? But that’s the honest, ugly truth. It does. Not always, not all the time, not every minute. But often enough. Too often.

“I live my life in widening rings which spread out to cover everything.”

That’s the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. I read that line in one of his poems while I was up at the cabin, and it stopped me in my tracks. Because the hard truth is, I don’t always — or even often — live my life in widening rings. When I choose social media, when I choose to let social media dictate my life rather than living and being fully present in my real, actual, in-the-flesh life, I find myself living in an increasingly smaller and smaller space. More often than not, social media and my online life press in on me from all sides and crush the very life and breath out of me.

This, friends, is a quandary. Because as much as I dislike it, as much as I find that social media zaps the life right out of me, it’s an integral part of a writer’s professional life these days. Now, I could be brave like my friend Shawn Smucker, who recently closed his Facebook and Twitter accounts entirely, but frankly, I’m chicken. My platform stinks like giant rotten tomatoes as it is; can I really afford to step off the grid?

Or, here’s another, more difficult question: am I simply offering the platform rationale as an excuse? Is the real truth that I won’t step away from social media because it feeds my need to be known?

While I was on vacation in Minnesota I had a dream that I recalled in intricate detail when I awoke. In the dream, I was in charge of a visit by the Pope (it was not Pope Francis, but Francis’s successor, apparently). When I met the Pope, I extended my hand and introduced myself, and as he shook my hand, the Pope looked at me closely, and then said, I kid you not, “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere? You look familiar…Oh! I know! I read your articles in the Journal Star!”

No lie. I dreamed that the Pope recognized me from my articles in the Lincoln Journal Star.

Once I was awake and had stopped dying of laughter, I realized the gravity of this funny-but-not-really-funny dream. It pointed in technicolor clarity to my desire to be known. Recognized. Dare I say, famous.

This, friends, is my be-all and end-all idol: I want to be known and valued.

Now here’s the point where, if I were a good Christian writer, I’d tell you that I am known – known by the One and Only One who matters. But I can’t do that, at least not honestly, because even though I believe and know it in my head, I don’t always believe and truly know it in my heart. And so to go down that road right now in this blog post, with relevant Bible verses and encouraging words, wouldn’t really be truthful or authentic.

Maybe this is where we come back to my struggles with faith. Maybe I haven’t been transformed as much as I’d like to believe. Because the truth is, if I truly believed and knew in my heart that God knows me and loves me and values me, and that’s all that really counts or matters when all is said and done, would I really continue to struggle day in and day out with this idol? Wouldn’t this problem be solved by now if I really believed I am known by God and that being known by him is the only being known that matters?

And how about this: if I don’t always truly believe and know in my heart that I am known by God and that’s all that matters, can I say I really, truly believe in God?

Oh boy. We’ve gotten ourselves down into one big ol’ rabbit hole, haven’t we? And you thought this post was going to be all Minnesota pretty pictures, didn’t you? {yeah, me too – thus the trouble with writing…sometimes it leads you where you don’t expect and where you don’t really want to go}

It seems I’ve been doing this a lot lately: leaving you with more questions than answers, more unsettled than peaceful. I’m sorry about that, I truly am. I guess though, for what it’s worth, questions and unsettledness go hand-in-hand with real life, and maybe even with real faith. At least that’s the way it seems to be for me.

For now, I’ll leave you with that Rilke quote again, because I think there’s something there that’s relevant to all the topics and questions I’ve touched on here: social media, being present, asking questions, wrestling with idolatry, living out faith. Friends, together let’s ask ourselves this; let’s sit with this question a bit today:

Are you living your life in widening rings? And if your answer is no, like it is for me, how might you begin to change that?

God Showed Me My Social Media Addiction and He Showed Me the Way Out

April 28, 2015 By Michelle 34 Comments

So I’ve made a decision: I’m going to spend quite a bit less time on the Internet and on social media in particular. I realize I’ve made this declaration before and have failed abysmally in the follow-through. But I think sometimes you have to declare and fail multiple times before you are really, truly ready to make the definitive leap. I’m ready to leap, friends, and let me tell you why.

I’ve known for quite some time now that social media is dangerous ground for me. It’s a source of temptation; social media, particularly Facebook, lures me toward my most pervasive and prevalent sins — envy, jealousy, coveting and comparison. I know this, and yet I continue to come back to the source, the vehicle, of temptation time and time again.

For a long time I’ve justified my social media consumption as “part of my job.” After all, as an author I am expected to build and maintain a platform, and social media is a necessary part of that platform. I need to be on Facebook, I tell myself. I need to be on Twitter and Instagram and in the comments of blogs and here and there and everywhere, I tell myself. I need to be visible, I need to have a voice, I need to be part of the crowd, I tell myself.

Those statements you read right there? That, my friends, is the voice of addiction – the voice that manipulates circumstances and reality in order to rationalize and justify unhealthy, destructive behavior.

Back on March 21 I read a verse in Matthew that I jotted into my journal. And I’ve been sitting with this verse, chewing on it, mulling over it, ever since.

“Keep watch and pray,” Jesus tells his disciples in the Garden of Gethsamane, “so that you will not be given over to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” (26:41)

Right there, in four simple words, Jesus offers the solution to withstanding temptation: Keep watch and pray. And so for the past month or so, ever since March 21, that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been keeping watch, and I’ve been praying, and God has shown me, very clearly, the ways in which social media tempts me to turn away from him toward negative, self-destructive thoughts and behavior.

Keeping watch has helped me see that spending too much time on social media tempts me to commit the Three C’s: comparing, coveting and complaining.

In keeping watch, I’ve also learned to recognize the tell-tale signs that I’ve succumbed to these temptations once again: feelings of envy and jealousy, which gives rise to a pit in the bottom of my stomach, which then ultimately results in feelings of sadness, unworthiness and apathy.

{Yeah, I’m a real picnic around here. You might want to think about sending my husband some chocolate. Or better yet, some beer.}

In keeping watch, I’ve also learned to recognize what typically prompts me to turn to social media, and more often than not, it’s not because it’s “part of my job,” but rather, because I’m bored, fatigued, procrastinating, need a break or have writer’s block.

It’s no coincidence that the same week I read that verse about keeping watch and praying, I also read this in Matthew:

“The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced.” (4:18-19)

In keeping watch, I’ve noticed how much time I spend on social media each day versus how much time I spend in God’s Word, and let me just say, social media wins every single time, hands-down. By a lot. I might read the Bible for 20 or 30 minutes — on a good day, an hour — in the morning, but compare that to how much time I spend on social media each day: an hour? Two? More?

Keeping watch has forced me to see how God’s word is falling among thorns and struggling to take root, how it’s being crowded out by the insecurities and worries and desires for other things like success and popularity and being known — insecurities and worries and desires that are largely fueled by social media.

On March 28, the day I read those verses about the thorns, I wrote a prayer in my journal. I asked God to help me with my social media addiction. I asked him to help me weigh Scripture more heavily than I weigh social media. “Less social, more Scripture,” I scrawled onto the white-lined pages.

Beneath that prayer I made a list titled “Do THIS Before You Click”:

1. Read Scripture – even a just a verse or two or a psalm.

2. Pet the dog.

3. Read a poem.

4. Get a snack.

5. Step outside for a few minutes.

6. Answer an email.

7. Vox or text a friend.

8. Use the bathroom. {I’m nothing if not practical}

9. Switch out the laundry.

10. Fill up your water bottle.

God has been so good to me this past month. Not only has he guided me toward watching and praying, not only has he shown me exactly how social media tempts me to succumb to negative behavior and thoughts, not only has he alerted me to my temptation triggers (boredom, procrastination, fatigue, etc.), he’s also helped me identify a number of better choices available to me when I feel the urge to turn to social media for a “fix.” I love how God knows exactly how practical I am and how intentional I need to be.

Social media is not inherently a bad thing. In fact, social media can be beautiful and life-changing and full of love and laughter and goodwill. It’s not a vice or a source of temptation for everyone. But it is for me, and I know that now in ways that I’ve not fully understood it before. I realize now that I’ve been manipulating circumstances in order to rationalize and justify my unhealthy, destructive use of social media, I know it needs to stop, and I’m grateful that God has shown me the way.

Q4U: Have you identified a source of temptation in your life? Has God helped show you the way toward battling that temptation?

Listen Here, Klout: I’m No Fool {Authentic You – Day 3}

October 2, 2013 By Michelle 25 Comments

A Disclaimer: So I wrote this post a before I decided to write the 31 Days series on authenticity. But hear me out – this is not cheating! We’re going to dig into social media a bit here this week — specifically how social media has the power to warp our sense of self and our definition of value. This little letter to Klout is the perfect way to launch that conversation.

Dear Klout,

I got a message from you in my in-box last week. “Congrats!” you said. “You have a new moment on your Klout profile.”

Apparently, according to you, I’d created a post that had recently engaged a lot of people on my social media networks. You informed me my “moment” had been added to my profile, where only my “best social media moments are shown.”

I admit, for a second – okay, more than a second – I was pleased. You had deemed me valuable. Evidently I was making an impact. Evidently I had something important to say. Evidently people were listening to me. I’d had “a moment,” thank you very much.

But you know what, Klout? I smartened up.

The painful truth is, I do tend to fall for what you and your social media friends deem the real truth.

I do sometimes fall headlong into the trap of defining my moments, my whole self, according to what you say is important.

I do tend to forget, or to entirely miss, what the real moments are.

But let me set the matter straight, Klout: the real moments aren’t the witty Facebook updates or the quirky tweets, no matter how many “likes” they garner, no matter how many comments or replies fill up the thread scrolling underneath.

The real moments aren’t the blog posts, even the ones that go massively, crazily Today Show-worthy viral.

No matter what you say, my moments don’t happen online, and they are not defined by social media networks. My real moments happen in the regular-old, ordinary, precious everyday.

Like under the comforter, the latest Percy Jackson novel propped open on my lap, a warm body in Angry Bird pajamas pressed against my side.

Or at the dinner table, silverware clattering to the floor and a boy with a mop of red hair complaining about the stinky fish.

Like on the soccer field, in the flurry of cleats and the wrangle of small, sweaty bodies and the leap and cheer of proud parents and grandparents on the sidelines.

Or when I walk with my husband to the mailbox as the early evening sun slants golden across the backyard, and turn to him smiling to say, “Hey, this is kind of like a date!”

Real moments happen not when a social media machine tells me they do, but when I open my eyes, breathe in the scent of wood smoke in the autumn air, and think, This. Right here, right now. This is it. A precious moment.

Klout, I’ve got to tell you, it was close. You almost had me with the “you had a moment” declaration. You almost had me thinking I was all valuable and important and the real deal because of a ten-word status update or a 140-character tweet. You tricked me…for a minute.

But I’m no fool, Klout, I’m no fool. No matter how many emails you send me, no matter how many exclamation points you use, no matter how many emphatic declarations you make, I know this:

My moments take place right here, right now, in this regular-old, ordinary, precious life of mine. I decide which moments are valuable. I decide which moments are real, worthy and true. And you know what? It’s all of them. Every last ordinary, everyday, precious one, thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Michelle M. DeRusha

So tell me, do you ever fall into the trap of allowing social media to define your real moments or even you yourself? How do you extricate yourself from that kind of thinking?

Additional Food for Thought:

Six Reasons Social Media is Dangerous for Me, by Glennon Doyle Melton

When This is Some Real Talk about Blogging, by Preston Yancey {the bobble head Barbies are a little freaky, but the message is good truth}

How To Make Your Life Count, by Jennifer Dukes Lee

pitfalls of social media

Moby Dick

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