Mental Health & Wellbeing Matters | Going outside

In our weekly mental health spot, the difference when viewing the world via a walk down the street, against social media. A few people have pointed this out of late, and so here’s a bandwagon I’m very happy to hitch a ride on. Walk down any given high street for an hour on a Saturday ... Mental Health & Wellbeing Matters | Going outside

In our weekly mental health spot, the difference when viewing the world via a walk down the street, against social media.

A few people have pointed this out of late, and so here’s a bandwagon I’m very happy to hitch a ride on.

Walk down any given high street for an hour on a Saturday afternoon, and more often than not, you’ll see people getting on with their day. They won’t be shouting at each other, hurling abuse, and generally being divisive and unpleasant. Some people even smile, some talk to each other in a pleasant and reasonable way. If someone stumbles or falls, someone else tends to jump in and try and help. People, as a rule, find a way to get on. Or at the very least, quietly go about their business.

That, chums, is a slice of real life.

Now take that hour, and spend it on social media for roughly the same amount of time. The inverse tends to be true. You don’t have to search far to see comments that people wouldn’t dream on the whole of saying if they were looking someone in the eye. We all know the kind of comments, and the inherent unpleasantness and divisiveness that’s deep rooted in them. That’s not my experience of walking around a high street in daytime, but it’s fairly commonplace on social media.

There are exceptions to every rule of course, but as rules of thumb, it’s worth considering.

Social media has its positives, and it really does have lots of them, but it’s hard not to see it as poisoning the well of human discourse. It’s sometimes hard even for the most level-headed person to resist a doomscroll, or to not get their heckles up. But it rarely helps to join in, and the underlying algorithms, fuelling the fortunes of very rich people who benefit from hate, are duly primed.

Personally, I’ve come away from certain social media platforms, and am very careful how much time I spent on others. I say that fully knowing that Film Stories wouldn’t exist without them, and without their ability to foster some kind of community. But also, things have moved on, and, well, so have social media platforms. It pays to be picky.

But also, it pays sometimes just to switch them all off. To go for that walk and see how actual human beings in the real world respond to one another. Sure, it’s not always pleasant. Yet usually, it’s a lot more encouraging than prime time social media…