On the Relative Merits of Social Media Sabbaticals
This summer I took a short break from Facebook. During my sojourn, I thought long and hard about whether I should retain some sort of online presence and if so, what should that ideally be? I haven't always been my best self on Facebook and, while I have endeavored to improve my communications by keeping my caustic wit and misanthropy in check and avoiding time-wasting arguments, I often wondered if I was truly contributing anything meaningful or if I was merely being solipsistic and narcissistic. Prior to my mini-break, I had been trying to wean myself away from screens with varying degrees of success. I sit down at the computer for a couple of minutes here or there throughout the day. Cumulatively, those minutes add up. For a while I gravitated to Twitter but I quickly tired of the Twitterverse (the woke hand-wringing does get to be a bit much, even for me, a died in the wool "leftie l...