social media

  • Liked or unliked

    I wonder what the people who are not liked think?

    You might think you already know. You might say it’s easy to spot people who are not liked. Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton? Boris Johnson? Greta Thunberg?

    But of course, everybody we have ever heard of is liked by some group of people. That’s why we know them at all. They are doing it to be liked.

    You don’t have to like me

    Even when they say they’re not doing it to be liked, that they’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, they’re still liked. Liked by the people who like to hear someone say they’re not doing it to be liked.

    Humans are social creatures in general. It’s our drive. But I wonder, what do the people who are not liked think? Those who go unseen. Those nobody notices.

    We’ll never know, of course. Because they’re not on social media. Or any platform of any kind. They’re unseen. Unliked.

    Talking of being liked, are you a smartphone addict?


  • Are you a smartphone addict?

    The perfect smartphone burial pit

    Our household is having the zeitgeist conversation of the moment: how to manage smartphone addiction. 

    Then I got a lesson as if sent from heaven. My phone simply went missing. Was it a sign? Turns out it was, in a way. 

    iPhone found in pit

    I don’t know why I even looked, but as I took away the carefully constructed pile of planks and sticks that cover my son’s excavation hole in the garden, under the final layer I struck treasure – the back of my iPhone case nestled in the soil. 

    The frenzied search had lasted some time. I pieced together my movements like a detective at a crime scene. Finally I remembered. I had been standing in the garden while my son was playing…

    …browsing the BBC News app. Was it more important to know about the Australian elections than what my own son was doing in our back garden? Apparently. 

    His response had been to take it when my back was turned and bury it. 

    Smartphone containment

    No one seriously entertains the idea that mere mortals can ‘do an Ed Sheeran’ and simply get rid of it. We don’t have an army of Personal Assistants, armed with their own smartphones, to manage our lives for us. 

    But for all the necessity, most of our smartphone use is utterly luxurious – none of it has to happen, probably not for as long as it does, and we all know the apps are designed to keep us thumbing and scrolling. 

    You’re all caught up!

    Yes, I know. Apps like Instagram have fallen on their sword and started to tell us when we’ve literally seen every image in our feed once already and can probably switch it off. But it sure feels good to know it’s all done. I’m up to date!

    The next challenge for tech is to see if it can find a place in actually freeing us to live our lives alongside it. TV always had trouble with that – but TV couldn’t move with us, which limited its power. 

    Our pocket rockets have to find a long-term way of making us feel better. If they ultimately get in the way of real life, they’ll just be switched off.

    Or buried.

    Turns out kids can even teach us about words (shouldn’t that be the other way around?). Read my blog Lost and Found Words