As I’m typing this, I’m 47 and I find social media and what it’s done to life fascinating. Since I’m 47 I remember before the internet and before social media. Currently I have three active social media accounts:
- There’s Instagram. This is where my teaching stuff goes. If you’re interested in things I use to teach special education, go there.
- There’s Facebook. This is information about life and family. If you’re not a real friend, close work acquaintance, or family then my settings are such that you can’t really see anything there. I don’t have time to post much on Facebook during the week.
- There’s Twitter. This is where coaching stuff goes. I try to keep my coaching tweets to two types; informational and motivational. There’s enough negativity in the world, you don’t need more from me – plus nobody cares!
I get up really early and work out. I teach during the day. I coach after I teach. When I’m not teaching or coaching I’m preparing to do both. When I’m not doing those things I’m spending time with my family or trying to do things that are not connected with either.
I’m rarely on social media. I don’t check my feeds and a message may take a long time to get to me or get replied too. About a year ago I turned off all the notifications on my phone.
What I do is I sit down on Sunday and I think through and draft out my Twitter and Instagram posts for the week. Then I go and post them each morning. By and large, I find most social media to be extremely negative and a serious time drain. For example, this fall football season and an election will happen. To spend time on social media is going to mean wading through lots of drivel about the anthem protests (both sides of this) and lots of negative posts about politics (again, both sides are guilty here). Life is too short.
First email, then social media, has created an interesting phenomena. That is, people will type things (and hit send or post) they would never dare say to you in person. Social media has also created the idea that everyone’s opinion is important and must be shared.
I occasionally have keyboard warriors and gurus who want to show off how smart they are or be proven “right” as a result of my posts. Some want to use my posts to sell themselves or their products. I’ll be honest, I block almost every one of those. If you are someone I respect then you might get a post to the effect of “We agree to disagree.” If not, then I blocked you. The reason that I blocked you is that life is short, I personally don’t have time for social media debates, and if it upsets you then you don’t need to see it. Plus, if you’re really coaching then you don’t have time for these debates either – and at the end of the day it’s not important, which everyone loses perspective on.
Now, this is not going away and I understand that. I think social media has a lot of value in the sense that it provides a way to transmit information and it provides access to people from around the world that you would not normally have access to. But it also brings out a lot of ugliness in people and that’s only fixable if people want to fix it.
Today social media defines you to the world. This has huge ramifications to people wanting a job. If your Twitter account is full of pictures of you partying like a rock star or porn, then you might be a great person but I’m not going to want you working with my athletes. If you are argumentative and insulting on social media, because it’s impersonal, then you probably won’t appear to an employer to be good at working in a team environment. Food for thought.
