I’ve had a love/hate relationship with social media going back to the first time I blew out all the old content on my Twitter account in 2011. Since then I’ve found all of the services somewhere between enjoyable and a necessary evil and I’ve rarely been able to make peace with it.
Now I’m trying to change that.
The fact is that having a social media presence is a necessary evil if I want to participate in society in 2025. While I’m there I can also enjoy it and that’s OK. The part I am going to embrace is that I can still do it on terms that are healthy for me.
What does “healthy” mean?
Healthy means avoiding the toxic and predatory networks like Facebook and avoiding right-wing/Nazi propaganda sites like X.
Healthy means embracing smaller communities like Mastodon and Bluesky.
Healthy means using professional accounts like LinkedIn and GitHub more effectively by embracing the features they have while also not taking either too seriously.
Healthy means embracing my own history and not using auto-deletion services to clean out my accounts like I have been every few months or even weeks.
Most of all, healthy means enjoying the services I do use and being, well, social.
For nearly 15 years my relationship with social media has been anything but healthy and, for once, I’m excited to change that.