King's Lynn & West Norfolk Christmas, new year resolutions, Facebook, Instagram, social media

Lynn News Washed Up column by Sarah Juggins

This column will be published following the extravaganza of Christmas, so I hope everyone had a wonderful time and have booted 2022 out of the door, as well as gearing up for what 2023 offers.

For my own family Christmas Day was a chance to be in each others’ company for a longer than usual length of time. This can, of course, sometimes go wrong, but thankfully on this occasion the day passed in a swirl of eating, drinking, laughter and happiness.

It also got me thinking about the way we interact these days.

I met up with some friends who I hadn’t seen since before the Covid pandemic but just about every conversation was preceded by the phrase ‘I saw on Facebook that you had been ....’

After a while it began to irk. It seemed that every move I had made had been noted and memorised, so I was left with very little to actually talk about that was new.

Then I realised that this was not the fault of my friends but in fact it was all down to me. Like so many other people I have become guilty of living my life through the prism of social media.

Actually, not a prism but a filter. What is posted on Facebook or Instagram isn’t my life as it is, it is the version of my life that I am happy to release to the world.

And then, contrarily, when people talk to me as if I was that person, I get irritated because they don’t understand me or who I really am.

We are coming up to the moment when we press the re-set button, making new resolutions that, we hope, will shape the next few months.

Ultimately, new year resolutions are a way for us to try to be better people.

After a happy few hours reconnecting with my family and a growing abhorrence of the way social media has provided a platform for me to give an edited – and less three-dimensional – version of myself, my New Year’s Resolution is quite simple.

I am going to reclaim myself from the clutches of social media.