I Don’t Think I Know How to Be a Proper Consumer of Social Media

I’m beginning to think I don’t know how to consume social media properly. Not produce it. Consume it. When I resurrected this version of The Examined Life, I kind of parodied the whole thing: Social media has become a sea of silent scrolling—thumbs up, heart emojis, maybe a fire symbol if you’re lucky. But real conversation? How Mrs. Sturgill likes her steaks... Rare.

Here I am. Posting. Sharing. Self-promoting. Hoping for engagement. Wondering if the little red notification bubble means something deeper than dopamine. Do I need to click “Like” to stay relevant? Does a fire emoji equal affirmation? Is silence indifference, or just busyness?

I sometimes tap “Like” out of courtesy. A digital nod. Because I know what it feels like to toss something thoughtful into the void and hear nothing but the sound of your own echo. I will be totally honest here: when a FB "friend" asks me to answer a set of questions, repost on my own page, rinse and repeat, I'll usually answer, but not repost. Personally, when I post a blog lead-in, I won’t pretend I don’t appreciate the occasional emoji. We’re human. We like acknowledgment.

But here’s the thing. The most-read blog I’ve written recently wasn’t the clever one. It wasn’t the polished one. It was the one where I admitted I cried like an infant over inclusion; a topic still near and dear to me for more reasons than I often articulate. A former student, now a rockstar educator, asked to share it. Of course, I said yes. And her post received as much feedback, maybe more, than mine.

That didn’t sting; it fascinated me. Because it reminded me: once you release something into the world (online), it’s no longer yours. It belongs to whoever needs it. I should know that for all the digital logos I provided to schools I worked out gratis (some on sports uniforms two decades later) (hey, SMT, the sports logo I created would've been much sharper if you kept my river icon below the cross).

My analytics are humbling. In the last six months, I’ve published 178 posts. Some hover around 20 reads. The highest is around 60. Meanwhile, the site itself has had over 5,000 views; 950 in February alone. It’s a weird bell curve. Humbling on both ends.
Nine hundred readers from the U.S., 60 from Ireland. Forty-three from Sweden. Ten from Brazil. Ten from Vietnam. Three each from Canada and Mexico (thank you, Paul and Molly). Most reading is on electronic devices.

It amazes me and shrinks me at the same time. Yet  I still don’t know how to navigate Instagram properly. Technically, I have more followers there than on Facebook, but I have no idea how to translate the “rumblings of a madman” into squares and reels. Somewhere between hashtags and algorithms, I lose confidence.

An administrative assistant told me recently I’m “not detail-oriented.” That landed heavier than it should have. What people don’t see is how much time I spend trying to become better at everything I do. Sometimes the effort doesn’t get the spotlight. Only the outcome does.

Maybe that’s social media in a nutshell. Outcome over effort. Reaction over reflection. 
Emoji over engagement.

I used to read voraciously every night — MSN News, Apple News, Google News — trying to be informed, trying to understand the world. Lately, I’m not so sure what’s fact and what’s performance anymore. The lines feel blurred. Opinion dressed up as certainty. Certainty masquerading as truth. Strangely enough, I sometimes hear more grounded honesty from the Kelce brothers joking on a podcast than I do from an evening news broadcast.

That realization doesn’t make me cynical. It makes me want to write more. Because the more I think I know, the less I realize I actually know. Writing helps me sift. It slows my thinking down. It forces me to wrestle with nuance rather than react at speed.

I now follow other bloggers, partly to learn, partly to admire. Some are wildly entertaining. Some are deeply wise. Facebook’s algorithm has decided I need a daily dose of Buddhism, spiritual healing, and self-help. I don’t hate that.

Maybe I don’t need to be a “proper” consumer of social media. Maybe I just need to be an intentional one. Less scrolling. More reflecting. Fewer emojis. More conversations.
I’m not the president. I don’t need a cabinet of yes-people. I don’t expect universal agreement. In fact, I distrust it. What I want is dialogue. What I want is thought. What I want is to keep writing in a world that keeps swiping. If that means 20 readers some days and 60 on a good one? That’s alright, because somewhere out there, maybe in Ireland, or in Sweden, or Brooklyn, someone paused long enough not just to scroll, but to think. That should be enough for me