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Social Media and E-mail Protocol

Now we are going to look at your online life, social media and the ubiquitous overflowing inbox which seems to demand attention all the time. It would be difficult to find someone who received hundreds of letters through their door every day – all of which needed opening and reading - yet who doesn’t see a deluge of new e-mails every time they log on? We all know that most will be junk of some kind, but that doesn’t ease the fear that among the links to supermarkets and notifications of sales, there isn’t one crucial message which must not be missed. We’re confident that drawing a line around your inbox is one boundary everyone will benefit from – and learn to enjoy too.

We will also show you how to assess the time you spend staring at screens and how to build a healthy boundary around your Wi-Fi use. We also cover using self-boundaries when establishing or seeking friendships online, the shaming phenomenon and online safety.

By the end, you will have a clearer idea of your own relationship with the online world, and the tools to create healthy self-boundaries so you can navigate it more securely.

Draw the Line: your phone is not human, merely a conduit. Remember that none of these conversations are face-to-face.

When we say social media, we’re including every kind of interaction and relationship online, whether it’s someone you know on Twitter, a business contact on LinkedIn, a gamer friend on World of Warcraft, or family members on WhatsApp: the same basic rules apply to all these online communities. After all, social media is not the preserve of teenagers on Instagram. We’re all at it – in some way at some time. For the first time, more than half of all online adults who are 65 and older (56 per cent) use Facebook. Roughly half of Internet-using young adults aged from 18 to 29 (53 per cent) use Instagram. And half of all Instagram users (49 per cent) use the site daily. The share of Internet users with college educations using LinkedIn reached 50 per cent. And women dominate Pinterest: 42 per cent of online women now use the platform.

So, how much time do you spend on social media every week? You may be staggered to know that the average adult is probably online almost a full day and night each week. According to the communications watchdog Ofcom, in its Ofcom’s Media Use and Attitudes 2015 report, the average adult spends more than 20 hours online a week (which includes time spent on the Internet at work). And 2.5 of those hours are spent ‘online while on the move’ – away from home, work, or place of study. Young people aged between 16 and 24 spend more than 27 hours a week on the Internet. It’s practically as much time as you spend in a full-time job.

Of course, much of that time will be related to work. And surely, it doesn’t matter if we then check in with our friends through Facebook after work … We can spend as long or as little online as feels good, can’t we?

Well, perhaps not. The medical community are increasingly warning of injuries related to overuse of Wi-Fi-related technology, including repetitive strain injury and back problems from too much intense use of phones. A 2014 study found that looking down at a mobile is the equivalent of placing a 27kg weight on one’s neck. According to Kenneth Hansraj, a New York back surgeon, writing in the journal Surgical Technology International, an average human head weighs about 4–5kg, and tilting it down to check Facebook, send a text, or to Google the weight of a human head increases the gravitational pull on the brain. The stress this places on the spine, Mr Hansraj says, ‘may lead to early wear, tear, degeneration and possibly surgeries.’

What is more worrying is the effect of all this online activity on our mental health and relationships with others. A Columbia University study has found that we are becoming so adjusted to using Google that our brains are rewiring themselves so that we look to information online before using physical maps, reference books or, crucially, asking other humans. The research, which was published in the journal Science in 2011, says: ‘It may be no more than nostalgia at this point, however, to wish we were less dependent on our gadgets. We have become dependent on them to the same degree we are dependent on all the knowledge we gain from our friends and co-workers—and lose if they are out of touch. The experience of losing our Internet connection becomes more and more like losing a friend. We must remain plugged in to know what Google knows.’

But what happens when your usage creeps up so much that it starts to affect other parts of your life: like health, sleep, or relationships? (There is a particularly strong link between a good night’s sleep and clear boundaries around Wi-Fi use.) This is when you need to examine all your self-boundaries and perhaps think about ways to strengthen the appropriate ones here.

Online Audit

Let’s establish how much time you spend online. For a snapshot of your activity, monitor a weekend’s usage of your preferred Internet device. This could be your mobile phone but might also be an iPad or laptop. First, notice how long you go without checking it when you wake up and make a note in your Learning Journal. Now, start logging every time you go online and for how long. You could use an app such as Moment to measure how much time you spend on your device over the course of a day. (Make a note if you are consciously avoiding logging on in order to achieve a ‘better’ set of statistics later.)

It’s useful to put down your feelings around your phone. Does the idea of being separated from your device cause anxiety? Do you feel like you are holding your breath or do you feel relieved? Can you remember the last time you forgot to charge your phone?

At the end of the weekend, count up your hours online and offline. Are you surprised (in either way)? If you spent longer online than you imagined you did, do you think time was wasted which could have been used more productively or pleasantly?

The overriding problem most of us have is simply spending too much time online. But the reason it can be so hard to establish a healthy boundary here is that we are likely not interacting with just one source of media.

We go online through a variety of portals – from social media to games to newsfeeds. And at the other end of the connection we are interacting with a variety of people who may or may not be who they say they are.

So, although you can turn off your computer as one way of gaining control, to achieve real mastery of your online time you need to examine who, what and where you connect with. That means examining what is drawing you in even when you know you need to be doing something else.

EXERCISE: The Wi-Fi House

Take a moment to imagine you are standing on the steps of a large and inviting house. It is brightly painted with gleaming mirrored windows you can’t see through. Now, add your own touches: turrets, flagpoles, paint colours, window boxes, etc. Welcome to Wi-Fi House!

In your hand appears the key to the front door. Are you going to open the door and walk in?

You’ve stepped inside and ahead of you is a beautiful hallway – you might imagine black and white tiles or a wooden floor with an Asian rug on it. Perhaps it is polished concrete with an Ercol chair.

There are multiple doors leading off the hallway. Each one has a name plate on. They say: Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Safari, BBC News, Music, Games and Pinterest.

Walk down the hallway: you’ll notice that different sounds/smells exist behind each door. Perhaps there is the clatter of typewriters and the smell of coffee from behind ‘e-mail’; ‘Facebook’ may be the front for the giggles and guffaws of friends; from behind the ‘Twitter’ door you can hear whispers and arguments; ‘Instagram’ is shielding the smell of fresh grass and you see camera flashes under the door.

Which doors are you drawn to? And which doors do you need to enter? For example, you might need to enter the e-mail door as you are waiting for confirmation of an appointment. But as you walk towards the e-mail door, you hear the giggles from behind the Facebook door. You may say to yourself, ‘I’ll just pop through the Facebook door for a minute,’ but once in you find it hard to leave. By the time you extract yourself and head back to e-mail, 30 minutes has passed. Do you head into e-mail now, or check the News instead?

Take a moment to consider. If there was a webcam that filmed the inside of your Wi-Fi House and your behaviour, what would you see? How often are you dashing in and out of the various doors? How much time are you in e-mail, compared to the other, more recreational rooms? If you speeded up the film, would it look like a comedy, with you constantly dashing in and out of rooms with no apparent logic or control? Now, leave the hallway and the house.

Have you noticed there are no bedrooms in the Wi-Fi House. Why do you think that is?

And how would you feel if you lost the key to the Wi-Fi House? (We’ll talk about how to master your key below.)

Note down your observations in your Learning Journal.

The Wi-Fi House masquerades as a ‘home’ because you may feel you are connected to others, but you are actually alone. Of course, there is some value in the connections you make and what you learn, and there is no harm in being entertained – as long as you remember you are in control of your Wi-Fi House, not the other way around.

FOMO

FOMO – or ‘fear of missing out’ – might be something you associate with teenagers who can’t bear to miss a party or a conversation but FOMO is at the root of many problems with online overuse. When you have experienced connectivity on this global scale – joining in hundreds of conversations via social media – it is inevitably quite difficult to extract yourself. It’s all just so exciting and new, like a modern child in an old-fashioned sweet shop. Perhaps our evolutionary genes are also coming into play: our ancestors knew how vital it was to collect knowledge as a way of staying safe. Maybe we are instinctively doing the same – on a grander scale.

BRING IN THE BOUNDARIES:

Your Online Plan

Here’s how to start managing the e-mails in your inbox, your social media and its allure, staying safe online and, most crucially of all, mastering the key to your Wi-Fi House.

E-mail protocol

We talked in the introduction about Victoria’s e-mail exchange, which was hugely improved by the introduction of self-boundaries.

Let’s take a moment and reflect back on the body of Victoria’s first draft e-mail:

‘I am so sorry to say that I feel I cannot help with your plans towards putting on this event. I am really busy with work and childcare at the moment, so am finding it hard to make time. Obviously, I will still do what I can to be useful and don’t forget to ask me to invite those people we mentioned, but I think that will have to be my input for now. Do call if I can do anything else.’

After reading it, Jennie says she pictured Victoria and the other person standing on either side of a large lobby in a railway station – in between them are lots of different-shaped bags. When one looks closer at the bags, they all have different labels. These read, variously: ‘I am sorry’, ‘Help me’, ‘Watch me, I’m juggling’, ‘Look how busy I am’, ‘Don’t forget, actually I am still helping you’ and ‘No, really, I will help you’. But there is also one very small packet over on the lost property desk, labelled ‘I can’t do this’.