I was having a bad morning. I felt discouraged and bothered by something I knew shouldn’t bother me. In fact, I was even more upset that I let it bother me, and it resulted in all kinds of negative thoughts and feeling sorry for myself.
I wasn’t about to talk with anyone about it either, because it was shamefully selfish.
I was having one big, sad pity party of one.
Then I opened up Facebook.
I know you’re thinking that if I was already having negative thoughts, the last thing I should do was log on to social media. Facebook is often one big haven of gloom and doom. But I wanted to distract myself from the chaos going on in my head, so I clicked.
Do you know what happened?
I discovered posts, status updates and memes friends shared that encouraged and uplifted me. A few even spoke directly to the very thing with which I was struggling. I honestly felt better after I closed Facebook. I have no doubt God used some of your mouse clicks to meet me in my mess.
A lot of people say they feel worse after browsing Facebook. It’s often used to spread bad news, spew rants and promote a Photoshoped, sanitized view of ourselves to the world. It leaves people feeling less than, discouraged and angry.
But maybe the problem isn’t Facebook, it’s who you’re friends with on Facebook.
Some people have thousands of Facebook friends. I know I don’t have 1,000 close friends in real life. I don’t think I even have 1,000 acquaintances.
I have 135 Facebook friends. That’s pretty small. (Although for this introvert, that sounds like a big number. I’d break out in hives if had to socialize with all of you at once in the same room.) The average Facebook user has 338.
I don’t friend just anyone on Facebook. Maybe that sounds snobbish, but that list of 135 people is carefully curated. If you’re one of my Facebook friends, it’s because you add something positive to my life, I respect you and I want to keep in touch. If you start to clog my news feed with too much rancor, I have been known to take a break from you and hit unfollow. (For the record, that hasn’t happened very often.)
So if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever your social media platform of choice is gets you down, maybe it’s not social media, it’s the people. There’s nothing wrong with doing a little personal list management. I mean, you wouldn’t keep meeting the same friend for coffee if every morning they hit you over the head with a stale biscotti. Why put up with it virtually?
To my 135 Facebook friends, thank you for being the kind of people who share uplifting posts. I love you. I really do. You never know who might be having a bad day. Sometimes you just need to read that Bible verse, that fake news story from The Onion or see that silly cat meme.
Because whether we want to admit it or not, hilarious cat memes are the cornerstone of social media.