Dear Rose # 5 - Giving up social media (mostly)

Rose is an amalgam of us - women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who are looking for somewhere they are seen, heard and listened to.

Dear Rose,

This week, I’ve spent less than an hour on social media. Not per day—for the whole week.

This new habit started because a few weeks ago, I was sent a notification from the Threads app. It said something like “A protester was shot dead in Minnesota”, with a timestamp of "1h," making it look like it had happened an hour ago.

This came maybe five days after Alex Pretti had been shot. In my highly anxious state, I thought, Fuck, not again, and I clicked.

Turns out the post was referring to Alex Pretti and had been made five days earlier. Not one hour ago.

The app lied.

Why am I surprised? But I was. The apps don’t care about us. They don’t care about our mental health, and they don’t really want to make our lives better. They feed off outrage, anger, disagreement, and disruption.

I know I’m probably sounding a little bit "conspiracy theory-ish" right now, but in that moment, I knew I had to get off. At least for a bit. My mental health is the most important thing to me, and I wanted to take my power back.

But guess what? It led me to write these letters to you.

Instead of posting on social media and hoping you’ll see it, now this is here, and you can read it any time you choose. If you like being on social media, that’s great—but if you ever want a safe place to go without all the outrage (except maybe this letter, ha ha!), I’m here waiting for you.

Love,

Em xx