Social media: use it before it uses you

I think social media is extraordinary. From home, with just a phone, you can share an idea, launch a project, meet people you would never otherwise have had access to. An open door to a world of possibilities, far beyond your immediate circle or where you happen to live.

For someone shy, posting a few words can even be easier than approaching someone in a room. You can show what you do and let the connections start there.

The other side of the coin

But that power has a flip side. You start out using a tool, and you can quickly become the one being used.

The Ring from Lord of the Rings comes to mind. You think you own it, that you control its power, that you can put it away whenever you want. Then, little by little, it takes up more space. Until it becomes your precious. Gollum doesn't exactly look like he came out ahead.

With social media, the question is worth asking: are you still the one deciding why you open the app, and when you close it?

You log on to post something. You check a notification, then a video, then another one. Ten minutes later, you are absorbed in the life of a stranger whose existence you had completely ignored until then. You don't even remember what you came to do.

It is so easy to get lost in an endless scroll of reels. Your thumb keeps moving, almost on its own. You drift from one topic to the next without really choosing, without really retaining anything.

The learning excuse

And the trickiest part is the excuse we give ourselves.

“I'm watching to learn.”

That excuse interests me, because it can be perfectly true at first. You are looking for an editing idea, an explanation, a way to present your work. Then the feed takes you elsewhere. You came to learn something specific, and you end up watching whatever comes next.

Learning can be an excellent reason to log on. It can also become a convenient justification for never logging off.

Logging on with intention

For me, it takes a guiding rule. Know what you came for before opening the app. Post something, reply to someone, find a piece of information, move a project forward. And accept leaving once it's done.

Log on. Do what you came to do. Log off.

It sounds almost too simple. Still, try doing it every single time.

The Snow White mirror

There is also another trap, a more personal one: turning your account into the Snow White mirror.

“Mirror, mirror... Do people find me interesting? Do they like me? Does my life look appealing?”

You post, then you come back to check. Views, likes, reactions. You wait for something to happen, for someone to confirm you were seen. Little by little, a post can turn into a request for validation.

I think you have to be honest with yourself on this point. Why am I sharing this? What do I hope to get out of it? Do I have something to say, or am I mostly waiting to be reassured?

An intention you can stand behind

Telling your story can be meaningful. An experience can make people think, a hard moment can help someone, an adventure can make someone want to leave. Humour, creativity and the simple pleasure of sharing also have their place. Not everything needs to earn money or serve a strategy.

But I want my posts to have an intention I can stand behind. To know why they exist, beyond “look at me, I'm here.”

Because you can show an enormous amount and still feel invisible. You can also watch other people's lives until your own starts to feel too ordinary. You end up choosing what you live based on what you'll be able to post about it.

I don't want my phone to become the audience in front of which I have to justify my existence.

Keep the best, refuse the worst

On social media, a lot of people talk, a lot of people scroll past, and attention is fragile. What took you an hour to prepare can be swept away in a second. Handing your self-worth over to that current seems like a bad trade to me.

I want to keep what these tools make possible: the connections, the ideas, the opportunities, the freedom to create and to share. But I also want to be able to close the app without feeling like something is missing.

Use social media. Don't let it use you.

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