Conscious Consumption - and not of the food kind!

I deleted TikTok from my phone a few weeks ago. 

Over the past couple of years, my Facebook feed has been ad after ad. Sometimes I wonder if any of my friends are still on Facebook or if everyone unfriended me? Or if it’s not cool to post anymore so are folks no longer posting? Well, there’s always that one or two that post all day, every day, but you know what I mean. What once was an amazing way to keep in touch with friends near and far has become a seller’s market. Mention once out loud that we need a new air fryer, and behold - Facebook groups such as “Air Fryer Recipes for Beginners” and local FB Marketplace air fryer sales pop into my feed. It’s insane. Sign up for a yoga class? Bam - “Volunteer at Yoga Retreats!” shows up. Looking for a Christmas gift for your teen? Bam - “Lulu and Lattes” has a gift guide showing up out of nowhere. The whole ‘Big Brother Watching’ thing is getting out of control. 

I enjoy my social media. Like everyone else, it’s a vice I use every day to decompress, kill time, and fill the three-minute gap while my car is warming up or the kettle gets to boiling. I use social media to promote Fat Mom on a Mountain, so I understand curating an audience to outreach and receive the most clicks. I’m not going to send a blurb about an overweight Mom turning fifty to a skinny, twenty-year-old dude. So, demographics are important. For myself, being a self-published author with little to no marketing experience, I have fumbled my way around Search Engine Optimization, content creation, and highlighting keywords -  all through the help of Google and YouTube. I know that to sell my book I need to hit women like me who are navigating this second half of life and might want to laugh about it! But when Facebook targets me as a demographic, well, I guess I get resentful when it assumes I want to know about the “30-day Body Blaster Challenge,” or how to “DeClutter Your Home in Three Weeks.” How do they know I’ve put on weight? How do they know my house needs cleaning? It’s unsettling.

I was on TikTok a few weeks ago when the drones were flying around New Jersey. At first, I didn’t think much about it. I figured it was some weirdos fooling around. Or maybe the military doing some kind of research. Then the mind of TikTok took over. My feed became inundated with drone footage and, subsequently, drone speculation. I found myself doom scrolling for hours, heart rate increasing, ruminating about the possibilities of what, exactly, the drones were. Aliens planning to land? Russian military about to strike? I was rattled. Bethany Frankle was particularly vocal on TikTok suggesting that NASA or the government was sniffing out some kind of radioactive material. She was convincing! As I watched the Skinny Girl founder in full-blown panic mode suggesting that we were all about to die, I noticed my own anxiety creeping higher. I had been on the couch surfing for an hour. Reel after reel was another hypothesis about what the drones were. I found my thoughts spiraling. 

All of a sudden I was not only feeling depressed about the fact that drones were coming to end the world, but found myself unhappy about my lack of motivation to work out, upset that it was only twenty degrees outside and the winter had set in, pissed off that the salad I planned for dinner had wilted and was inedible. I was being swallowed in a tsunami of negativity. My finger hovered over the TikTok app, then paused. TikTok had brought me some joy, didn't it? I got that great Christmas gift idea for my husband from a post, after all. The workouts I downloaded from it were solid. I laughed a lot when my feed was filled with bad dad jokes. Should I hit delete? 

I found the two seconds of strength and pressed delete. TikTok was gone. 

Since then, I have adapted quite nicely. When I need a distraction I can look at Instagram and Facebook, but set time limits on them so I don’t get sucked in. I do my Wordle and crosswords. I have an app that lets me color by number, I play on Canva designing new Fat Mom posts, and I’ve even started DuoLingo again. 

My health diet may not be stellar these days - what with the frigid New Hampshire winter, ice-coated slippery trails, and the chocolate enveloping my kitchen over Valentine's, but my information diet? That’s going nicely. I’m even in maintenance mode!