It’s not the first time I write about social media. A few months ago I wrote about how I reconnected with Italy after many years abroad thanks to social media. In general I see social media and the Internet in general as something positive, offering opportunities for connection, visibility and self-learning. I am a millennial after all. This doesn’t mean that I don’t see how people who don’t know each other easily end up insulting someone for a question in a group, for instance on travelling rules in times of Covid19. This interesting article on the Scientific American argues that the debates are polarised on social media because online networks are organised around a few key influencers, not because of social networks themselves. Like populist politics, I would add.
In reality I wanted to write about another aspect pertaining to social media; I wanted to write about how online conversations brought an old anxiety back into my life. Since March 2020 our online social life has been eating up parts of our real social life, creating new opportunities, as I said before. In my case it also put me in front of my need for approval. When I was a teenager I didn’t really have a group of friends, I did have friends, but I didn’t fit in a group. I wanted to fit of course, not fitting made me suffer, I just didn’t know how to fit in. The main reason I was/felt excluded is that I couldn’t physically be there all the time, not even most of the time, because my parents were very strict and didn’t alIow me to go out much. I was constantly switching from being an insider to being an outsider of groups. Later in life I turned this into something I enjoyed; I started cultivating a few groups, so when I was feeling on the outside of one group, I would step into another one and claim it as my choice. Because of corona, in real-life I cannot do this anymore, but I was ok because I had a few ‘online groups’ that compensated for it. The problem is that the social abilities I have managed to scrape together in my adult life are inadequate for online social group situations, where for instance jumping into a conversation is challenging, eye contact is nonexistent, and so on. I will find my way, but at the moment sometimes I end up not behaving like my true self and making it worse, instead of coming across as someone nice and funny as I intended to be. Does it sound familiar to anyone?
Why am I sharing these incomplete thoughts? I don’t have a conclusion, the intimate thoughts I share on this blog are meant to break the silence that too often makes us feel inadequate and lonely. Insecurities block us because they make us feel lonely, less of something, inadequate, they make us envy others but maybe the others feel the same way. Now I am a stable and happy adult (at least most of times eheh), so these considerations can cloud my day for a few moments, but there was a period in my life where they were taking up a bigger space. Back then I would have benefited from someone around me breaking the silence, so I am doing it now that I can.
Blabbering of a millennial 