Hello World

I hope you are having a good week.

I recently posted a couple of blogs around the topic of Digital Wellbeing, and I am going to touch on that today.

Social Media has many positives, particularly during the pandemic it helped us stay in touch and communicate.  For me personally I rely on WhatsApp to keep in touch with my close friends who live in Gibraltar – that is a significant positive boost for my wellbeing.

Lately I’ve reviewed and cleansed my social media – unfollowing or even blocking many accounts so I only follow value adding accounts, content or people.  I have found my use of social media in recent week to be a much more positive experience.

I wanted to share a post from Barnsley Council – I think it makes a good point on some of the negatives that can occur.

“Ending a hurtful comment with ‘just saying’ doesn’t make it any less hurtful. Just like how ending an offensive comment with ‘no offense’ doesn’t make it any less offensive.

Hurtful comments are hurtful no matter how much you may try and downplay them. Whether you tag something like #justsaying at the end or not, online abuse is still abuse.

Find out more about how we’re tackling online hate and abuse, and sign our pledge to show your support, at barnsley.gov.uk/noplaceforhate”

I personally felt this was a good reminder.  No one likes to receive hateful comments be it online or in person. I know this has been a widely discussed topic in recent weeks.  Together we can boost our collective digital wellbeing by considering what we post.

I’ve also taken many steps to cut back on digital news media too.  I no longer watch TV news and have removed many popular news feeds such as the BBC and Sky News.  Cutting back on digital news media has also had a profoundly positive impact on my general mood too.

There is no one size fits all approach for digital wellbeing, but I certainly found a lot of value in cleansing my social media and my sources for news.

I now feel I’ve achieved a more positive experience that adds a little more value.  I definitely see more cat videos than I used to 🙂