Social media thread: I’ve been wondering why I'm on this site so much, especially since it seems to be upsetting and exhausting more than informing and uplifting.

Social media’s addictive properties are well-documented, and Jenny Odell explains in ‘How To Do Nothing’ the ways in which algorithms are designed to create the illusion of autonomy while an unseen hand guides our every click.

But then I came across this quote from Sontag’s On Photography that resonated: “Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun…”

"They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.” Certainly, we are NOT on vacation, and fun is in short supply, but so many of us are unemployed, underemployed, home schooling, and/or working from home.

During these unending days and weeks and months, I find myself clocking into social media as though I were logging into my old office account from my many years of temping: joyless, dutiful, by rote.

Is our devotion to work and our fear of not being busy part of our addiction to these platforms? Staring at a screen is what so many of us are conditioned to do: does twitter sate us in a way staring out a window cannot?

I wonder if my time here is like a child playing with plastic food: I’m not working in the way they aren’t cooking, but we both pretend and approximate, and that is its own activity and way to pass the time.