Staying Sane on Social Media

Twenty top tips on who to block, who to follow and how to reply

This post is the - late¹ - quarterly ‘long-read’ voted for by paid subscribers. To vote each quarter on a topic that I should write about, become a paid subscriber. ‘Founding’ subscribers are also able to nominate topics for the quarterly vote. A big thank you, as always, to all readers and subscribers.

Social media is an infohazard.

I’ve seen too many people I once respected move seamlessly from questioning whether the costs of lockdown were worth the benefits through vaccine denial to praising the virtues of Putin. Or from a normal concern about climate change to believing Britain will be uninhabitable in 25 years, and that children born now will be condemned to a life of climate-related misery. From QAnon to whatever that 5G thing was, people are believing the craziest things.

Even if you don’t go full-on loopy, you are what you eat - and it does no-one good to consume an endless stream of catastrophising, whether about immigration or climate, trans or Trump. For those with large followings, the danger can be even worse, with the dopamine buzz of likes and reposts luring them into ever darker places in search of that next hit. Toxic food…that eats you back.²

Social media can give us a warped view of the world, stoking FOMO, unrealistic expectations and feelings of worthlessness. There are countless strangers on social media who are only too happy to reinforce that, with cutting remarks, sweary insults and abuse based on your name, your profile picture or anything else they can latch on to. If you’re not white, you’ll get racial abuse and slurs; if you’re a woman, sexualised comments and worse. However thick-skinned you think you are, sooner or later one of them will get under your skin - or else sheer repetition will take its mental toll.

Does that mean you should never use social media. No³ - it has its uses and can be a powerful tool. Sometimes it can even be fun.

I’d draw an analogy with the stock market - or, more mundanely, with alcohol. They can be navigated, but never forget the riptides waiting to pull you under and ruin your life - and that of those around you - if you don’t take suitable care.

The following rules are tailored towards X and BlueSky, the two main social media sites I use in a public, open, way.⁴ They are based on my experience as a mid-tier account (5k -7k followers on each):⁵ those with much larger accounts may find different approaches are needed. And it assumes that you are on these sites, at least to some extent, to either keep abreast of the latest conversation in some area or another, and/or to share your thoughts with others.

1. You don’t need to justify your decision to block someone. Sometimes I read a comment that stings and find myself thinking, ‘Was this sufficiently out of order to deserve a block?’ No! Stamp down that impulse. If anyone is making you feel bad, for any reason, block them straight away and move on.

2. Block anyone who is abusive, mean, insulting, belittling, threatening or otherwise unpleasant. Don’t even think about it - just do it. Your life is too short and your wellbeing too important to take abuse from strangers. If you’re subject to a massive pile-on, just ignore it, mute the conversation and then (optionally) come back 24 hours later and block everyone who deserves it.

3. If it’s someone you value following or interacting with them, then - maybe - if they’re unpleasant you might choose not to follow rules 1 and 2. Most of us can get overly heated sometimes on social media, or react badly. But if it keeps happening, you’ve no obligation to tolerate it just because they’re well known.

4. Block, don’t mute. Muting someone unpleasant doesn’t stop them posting nasty things for everyone else to see, or filling your replies with bile. Blocking gets them out of your feed and replies for good.⁶

5. Mute people who are just posting things you don’t want to see. Maybe what they’re posting is perfectly reasonable - but you just like don’t like seeing it. Maybe it gets in your head and messes with what you are thinking. Regardless of why, you don’t have to see it - so don’t.

6. Someone you don’t know using your name in a reply is a red flag, and should be probably be blocked on principle. OK, this one is more of a guideline than a rule, as such: occasionally such people are perfectly civil. But there’s a high correlation between name-using and knobbery.

7. ‘Detach quote’ and ‘don’t allow quote posts’ are powerful tools - use them.⁷ I don’t use them all the time, because they do limit reach and functionality - but they have their place. The latter is particularly useful when I want to post something to my followers but am not in the mood for a pile-on. Some bigger accounts also find only receiving notifications from people they follow useful.

8. Never, ever, ever use the algorithmic feed. It makes you more vulnerable to being swept down your own special rabbit hole that can take you to a very strange and unpleasant people. Using the ‘following’ feed will ensure you only see things that people you follow have posted or reposted.⁸

9. Follow a broad range of people, including those you disagree with. Obviously be selective about this - don’t just follow people who post rage-bait. But following a range of people doesn’t just help you have awareness of what those outside your immediate clique think - it tells you what issues they’re currently caring and worrying about. There is value to being on both X and BlueSky - there are important stories on each that you simply won’t see on the other, and people worth reaching who are only on one. Switching from one to the other can helpfully remind you that the issue de jour is not, actually, de jour, but only de BlueSky.⁹

10. Prioritise following people who shed light on subjects. This could be important data, the latest news on a topic, charts, valuable insights, useful explainers or interesting articles.

11. Follow some people who post about things other than politics. It doesn’t matter what it is - football, science, literature, history, you name it. Follow some authors you like who post about their books. You’ll feel better if you’re regularly seeing posts that have nothing to do with political debates or current affairs.

12. Don’t follow people who consistently post things that make you angry. This could be people you agree with, posting rage-bait, or those you disagree with, who really get under your skin. It’s not good for your state of mind, your wellbeing, or your relationships. The same applies to things that make you sad, or depressed, or helpless.

13. Don’t follow people who post/repost so often it clogs up your entire timeline. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with someone doing this if they want to, but it makes your experience worse if you follow them.

14. Don’t follow too many single-issue posters on any one issue. Dedicated single-issue posters can be great - they often share the most depth information about a subject. And if you agree with them on an issue you care about, it can be very easy to click ‘follow’. But if you follow too many, it will give you a warped sense of the importance of that issue, as your timeline fills up with it, and nothing but it.

15. Take a break: social media is not your life. Don’t let social media spoil your day out/family time/work concentration flow. Not every event has to be live-tweeted. In the same way your liver deals with alcohol better if it has some days off, so your mind will deal with the social media stream if it has regular breaks.

16. You don’t need to respond to the latest world event / mark World Donut Day. Unless you’re an elected politician, you just don’t need to do this. No, not even if it’s really tragic, or important, or commemorating something that really matters. If you want to post about it, that’s fine, too. But you don’t have to.

17. You don’t owe anyone a reply. No, not even if it’s a good comment. Sometimes a piece blows up and there are far too many comments to reply to. Other times you’re busy: you have a work deadline, or you’re spending time with family, or life gets in the way. On most topics there are also ‘stock’ replies, ‘Ah, but have you considered…’ which are standard go-tos for the other side of the debate. If I'm not busy, I try to give at least one reply to people I know, or who are asking a genuine question, but X and BlueSky are fundamentally a broadcast medium, not somewhere where you have a duty to reply to all.

18. Don’t feel you have to have the last word. It can be so easy to get drawn into an arguing exchange with someone with whom you’re unlikely to ever agree. Sometimes that’s fun - but 320 character exchanges are ill-suited to finding common ground, so don’t be afraid to just leave it.

19. Count to ten. Sometimes a reply or a comment just enrages you, and you feel you immediately have to snap back with the obvious rebuttal - or snarky reply.¹⁰ Stop, count to ten. Is replying necessary - or useful - or kind? You’ll have a better perspective if you wait 10 seconds, or better yet 10 minutes.

20. Don’t say anything online you wouldn’t say in person. The obvious one, but anything you write could be seen by thousands - or millions. The conversation you’re having in the comments is more like shouting in the townsquare. Don’t let social media ruin your life, your reputation or your career.

A reminder, if you want to ‘Ask me Anything’, this is still running - please leave your question in the comments on this page. Answers will appear this weekend.¹¹

1. Sorry! Next year I will remember that the exigencies of real-life Christmas, quizzes and forecasting contests means I should not leave the fourth-quarter piece until December.

2. Or an abyss that stares back at you, if we want to be unoriginal.

3. Though I am delighted at last night’s House of Lords vote placing an age-limit of 16 on social media use, and that the Government appears to be inching towards this position.

4. I do also use Facebook, but this is much more of a walled garden where I post stuff about daily life and discuss things with friends.

5. This reminds me of the ‘Who’s rich?’ debates. I consider myself mid-tier because some accounts have far more, and large accounts dominate what most users see. But Google tells me I am in the top 1% or higher of users by follower count for each, so people who think that the top third of the population are rich would presumably reject the ‘mid-tier’ label. But mid-tier is the best description here.

6. Occasionally people try to claim that blocking someone is somehow ‘restricting their free speech.’ This is nonsense - it’s simply saying they can’t see your posts and you’re not going to read theirs. They are still free to post to everyone else. Trying to get them kicked off the platform, or writing to their boss to try to get them fired for what they said, would be anti-free speech; blocking is not.

7. These features are only available on BlueSky, not X.

8. This is not intended in any way as a defence of the practice, but it is worth noting that the only four ‘bikinified’ photos I saw on X during the recent furore were four that women I follow had posted (that had been made of them) to raise awareness of the problem and protest against it. I’ve also never that I can recall seen any ‘snuff videos’ or similar. This is because I only ever use the ‘following’ feed.

9. Regarding unpleasant content on X, simply see Rule 8 - never use the algorithmic feed. The accounts of some BlueSkiers of Twitter bring to mind certain right-wing polemics about ‘hell-hole London’, with the druggies shooting up on every corner replaced by snuff videos and far-right rants. Yes, in both cases this exists if you look for it, but it is not hard to avoid. See footnote 8.

10. I have been guilty of breaking this one.

11. Probably.