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Rest in peace Notorious RBG. That said (and deeply felt)…today I want to tell you about a problem I’m having with something else—an article slamming social media, especially Zoom. 

Last week I was in a Zoom mtg breakout group that was supposed to discuss the disadvantages of meeting by Zoom—but all that 2 of us could talk about was how much we loved it! 

For one thing, I used to have to get up at 5am for this monthly meeting, early enough to walk the puppy, get ready to get out the door and make it to this meeting on time. As I live in the city without a car it was more complicated than it sounds.

Honestly, I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Plus, now I actually get to see everyone’s faces responding to what is being said when before, as we sat next to or behind the others in the room, I could never see who was rolling their eyes or nodding off.

So when some of the other people in our group, and McSchraefel’s article on “Why Our Hungry Screens Leave Us Hungry for More Nutritious Forms of Social Interaction,” go on about how you can’t get the personal vibe on Zoom, I just have to say I am sorry, I don’t agree. 

For work I use VSEE, the same HIPAA compliant video platform that NASA uses, and can absolutely still feel the energy shift for my clients when one of us says something that nails it for them. And there are those precious moments when we tear up together at the sheer joy or poignancy of it all. 

Probably it has more to do with what kind of attention we are paying to the other person in the first place. We all know how easy it is for the mind to wander away from the other person, in-person too.

One of the other participants in our group insisted sadly, head hung low sadly, that his business had fallen off because his sales depended on human connection that he considered impossible by Zoom. And yet, I happen to know someone else in the same business who told me recently that he is having the best year of his career by Zoom.

In the words of Marcus Aurelius, “Life is what our thoughts make it.” But thoughts are not facts, and we all have to watch out for our own self-limiting thoughts. So for now, I am enjoying the thing. I am enjoying videoconferencing with family, friends, clients, colleagues, and lovely people I have never met before. My hope is that the monthly group, and others like it, can go on forever in some hybrid format that suits us all when things let up, an idea I already pitched.

But there is more to social media than Zoom meetings, and some of the rest of it really is scary. If you haven’t already, check out “Social Dilemma” on Netflix. Here you will get a better education than you may want on how the rest of social media is contributing to, if not causing,  terrible things. These include mental illness and suicide rates among our children, increased polarization and breakdown of democracy in our culture—at least in part by way of what the virtually unregulated internet knows about what to put in our individual newsfeeds.

I’m pretty good at resisting extreme polarization, but I realize I could use some work with the phone. Way too often I check my phone for no good reason whatsoever, just for the fun of it, as if it is an addiction, which studies suggest that it is. I am going to fix that. And I know how. Just put it over there where I can’t reach it when I am watching the news, meditating, cooking, eating, exercising, sleeping, zooming, reading, writing… All there is to it. Boom. Done. I. AM. IN. CHARGE.

Once I attended an interfaith meeting at Harvard. The Hindu Swami gave a fantastic talk about how sometimes we have to show ourselves that we are in charge. So, for example, if you can’t imagine starting your day without coffee, take a week off, just to show the body or the coffee who’s in charge.

The “Social Dilemma” movie talked about how technology can bring us closer to utopia or dystopia, depending on who’s in charge, the human or the machines. I’m going to show myself and my phone who is in charge. You can too, if you care to. You can pick something for yourself, practice, practice, practice, and let us know what you find.

Warm wishes,

Madelaine