--- # How to Be Happier on Social Media **URL:** https://educatedconfusion.com/how-to-be-happier-on-social-media/ Date: 2024-10-29 Author: fatherlinux Post Type: post Summary: A while back, I stopped posting political content on social media, and I’ve been way happier since then. A buddy of mine had a talk with me about how often I was getting political on social media. I hadn’t even realize it, but he was right. I was posting political content all of the time.<p class="excert-link-wrapper"><a href="https://educatedconfusion.com/how-to-be-happier-on-social-media/" class="excerpt-more-link" >Continue Reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "How to Be Happier on Social Media"</span><span class="meta-nav"> →</span></a></p> Categories: Confusion, Suffering Featured Image: https://educatedconfusion.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/cropped-462571720_1064579235316646_6135973743602690292_n.jpg --- A while back, I stopped posting political content on social media, and I've been way happier since then. A buddy of mine had a talk with me about how often I was getting political on social media. I hadn't even realize it, but he was right. I was posting political content all of the time. It had become a much larger percentage of what I post and it wasn't making me or any of my friends happy. I had vaguely noticed that people had stopped following me, but I kind of ignored it. It wasn't until he had a conversation with me over breakfast that I really had the epiphany and stopped posting. Since then, I've spotted other people like me. We're friends, and historically we've interacted about all kinds of interesting topics. Then, one day, they start posting more and more political stuff. It becomes a bigger chunk of their lives. It consumes them. It makes them more and more angry, and less jovial. It's unhealthy. I think there's a better way to interact on social media, and I think I've discovered why. There's a concept called [Permission Marketing](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/permission-marketing.asp) where you give the audience a choice about receiving promotional emails, you're mindful about how often you bombard them with messages, and you respect their boundaries in general. This leads to trust and richer conversations about the "product" you want to sell them. The same is true in almost any social interaction, whether it's online or in-person. Whether it's your friends at the bar, your family at Thanksgiving, or randos on the Internet, I think there are three primary criteria to have a healthy conversation: - You have to actually know the person you're talking to. They have to respect your opinions in general. - They must indicate that they actually want to talk about the issue at hand - You have to respect the counter party as a grown up who is responsible for making the decisions in #1 and #2. Using this framework, let me highlight some common failure states that I see: - In in-person conversations, sometimes politics come up. That's fine, but then one party will take it too far after the other side doesn't want to talk about it anymore. That's a failure of criteria #2. - Often people *want* to talk politics and they're friends and family aren't interested, so they go out to social media because they can find #2 there. But sadly, if you do this enough, like everyday, you will quickly notice that you have ONLY found #2, and not much #1 and #3. - Often people want to talk politics, or tell people about their strangely personal problems, but their friends don't want to talk about it so they "put it on blast" on social media. This completely disregards #2 and results in sadness. People essentially expect an intimate response for a very non-intimate post. Painful. Mind you, all of these are statistical, not logical in nature. I'm not saying I NEVER talk about politics, or my personal problems. I'm not saying these conversations are always comfortable and have heaping helpings of #1, #2, and #3. This is more about averages. On average, I think people should seek some amount of all three criteria. Without this, neither you nor the audience is really benefiting. --- ## Categories - Confusion - Suffering --- ## Navigation - [Education](https://educatedconfusion.com/education/) - [Confusion](https://educatedconfusion.com/confusion/) - [Home](https://educatedconfusion.com) - [Confusion](https://educatedconfusion.com/category/confusion/)