Monthly Archives: February 2019

The good, the bad and the ugly – debate on social media

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One of the interesting and sometimes disturbing dimensions of social media is the insight you get into family members’, friends’ and acquaintances’ opinions and beliefs. Views they haven’t previously shared are suddenly out there as they share posts and participate in debates that are open for anyone to see.  It’s interesting to say the least, but it can also be deeply troubling. Especially in this day and age when many things have become so polarized and opinions and ways of expressing these opinions have become so black and white, not to mention extreme and rude. As a sociologist I can find following debates and reading the comment sections of social media updates fascinating, but it can also be sad and depressing. It makes me sad when so-called friends are just mean to each other in the name of debate. How people have the gall to be so rude when they are not face to face with the person they are talking to is beyond me, but this has actually been researched and found to be true: people are capable of saying things to each on social media that they wouldn’t be caught dead saying in person.

So sociologically this is all very interesting, but personally, reading the comment sections also makes me feel somewhat hypocritical. It makes me feel hypocritical because while I’m a social scientist and I write, publish and give talks to share my knowledge, I avoid participating in these debates. I avoid engaging in debates with people of detrimentally opposing opinions to me, even though I know that change doesn’t come about from only preaching to the already converted.

The reason I don’t want to engage is that I simply don’t know how. I don’t want to be drawn into an ugly argument peppered with insults, name calling and rude insinuations. I don’t want to have my words twisted into something I didn’t say or mean, which unfortunately is what I usually see in social media debates. I would be happy to participate in a calm and mutually respectful discussion, but on social media they unfortunately seem to be few and far between. So I choose not to engage.

But the other day I just couldn’t resist. A Facebook friend shared a post about colloidal silver. There is a growing and highly controversial trend in my country where people use colloidal silver as a health remedy, even though it really isn’t good for you and there are no studies at all that support any health effects. On the contrary. However, I am really no expert on the subject and I have no personal experience so I have just stayed out of it. The reason I suddenly decided to engage was that this said post was about how colloidal silver was supposedly medically approved until 1947 and that this information is proof of its benefits. Now I don’t know anything about this – that it has been approved before may very well be true, but that’s not the point. What got me was the argument that something that was approved over 72 years ago must be good for you.

I am a scientist – a social scientist – and while I am not an expert on colloidal silver, I am certainly an expert on how scientific research is done. I know about ethical guidelines and the rigor of the research process. I know how knowledge is created and that scientists constantly build on existing knowledge. I know that our knowledge continues to grow and that we know much more today than we did before. This is the reason that recommendations change and this is also the reason that we can know that something that was approved almost a century ago, in reality is extremely bad for your health.

That all makes perfect sense to me. What doesn’t make sense to me is to argue that something is good to use just because it was ordinated by doctors more than 72 years ago.

So that was where I couldn’t resist. I commented, explaining what I explained above about research and knowledge creation and development. I was polite, I thought, short and to the point. I didn’t take a stand on colloidal silver, just on the argument of something being approved so long ago.

And I got some responses.

What gets me though is that the responses generally didn’t engage with what I said at all, they were rather loaded comments about colloidal silver. The comment that really took the cake was about how NASA uses colloidal silver (again, I don’t know this for a fact) and that do I think that they are superstitious lunatics too?

At this point I want to point out that I didn’t breathe a word about either superstition or lunatics; I didn’t even think it. This person introduced these words himself, so I can only assume it reflects previous comments he has gotten in debates he has participated in.

But still, my feeling when reading the comment was, “what??”

I had said something calm and was as a result basically accused of name-calling, or at least of thinking of the person accusing me as a superstitious lunatic. How do you respond to that? Is there anything that I could possible say in response that would create a nuanced and respectful discussion? To me the comment about superstitious lunatics was below the belt; it was completely un-called for, and I really don’t think engaging in that would get us anywhere.

However, the problem is, that not engaging does nothing to bring people of different opinions closer towards a common understanding. It does nothing to create dialogue and to help us all understand each other better.

So, there’s the dilemma: to engage or not to engage? Either way, I’m not sure I can stomach it.

What is important to you and when do you draw the line?

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I had great plans for this blog post. I had a really good idea and I’ve been meaning to write it down for the past week and a half. It’s been almost two and a half weeks since my last post and for a blog where my intention has been to post weekly, that is a pretty long break. Especially since a person I met about half a year ago, whose opinion I really value, said to me after she checked out my blog, “I just have one criticism, I wish you would post more often.” That was a huge compliment, it meant that she really liked my blog. But it also made me feel pressured to actually try and be more active.

So that has been going through my head too, that and this idea that I have been meaning to write. I have just had too much to do, but have still also felt guilty about not getting my act together. Which is ironic, because this is my blog, which I write on my terms, about whatever it is that I want. No one tells what to write, or when or how to write it. This pressure I feel is all me.

Does that sound familiar?

It’s like when my son went from being a baby to being a toddler. One night, I was sitting on the edge of his bed at bedtime, looking at his window thinking that I really need to get him new curtains. He had baby curtains and I somehow had the notion that he needed kid curtains instead. I was sleep deprived, overworked and just overwhelmed in general, but still couldn’t stop thinking about how I really needed to get my act together regarding his curtains. It was eating away at me until I one day realized that the boy doesn’t even know he has curtains. His curtains were not hampering his development or cramping his style in any way, so why was I worrying about this? So I instantly stopped.

This example might seem ridiculous to you, but it is illustrative of how much of the pressure we have we actually inflict on ourselves.

Even at work. Yes, I know that corporate cultures can be very inflexible and stifling and there are certainly pressures that others put on us. But there are also things that we think we have to do or can or cannot do which actually aren’t things anyone has actually expressively said or taken a stand on.

Like the woman I met about a year ago who was working at a male dominated IT company when she went on maternity leave. They wanted her to come back to work earlier than she had planned and participate in meetings, and she wanted to do it too but was worried about how she was going to be able to do so with such a young child. I mean, she couldn’t take the baby with her to work. None of her colleagues had children and they were all male so that was just out of the question. Or was it? She finally realized that no one had actually said she couldn’t bring her baby to work, so she asked if it was okay, and it turned out that it was. She brought the baby with her to the meetings and nobody even blinked.

What she thought was impossible wasn’t.

But back to my blog. As I sat down to finally write it, I realized that I just didn’t have the energy. Writing about what I had planned to write about would have craved pulling out a few books and checking some facts and I have neither the time nor the energy for that right now. And since no one even knows about these plans of mine, much less expects me to write them down, why on Earth am I stressing about this?

When you have too much to do, you need to focus on what’s important. We’re not very good at that in today’s society, but sometimes you just have to draw the line.

We all need down time and the amount of work or pressure we can or should handle is very individual. You can’t compare yourself with other people; just because they can do something in a certain way, doesn’t mean that it works for you.

We have to remember to also take the down time that we need, regardless of what other people are doing, and not feel guilty about it. Because if you don’t take care of you, how are you ever going to be able to accomplish all the things you want to? If you become too exhausted or overwhelmed to carry on, it really isn’t going to help anyone anywhere in any way.

So, take care of yourselves and don’t think you have to do it all. Think about what is really important to you and focus on that instead.