This is a topic that’s been well re-hashed but it’s not something that particularly bothered me. For the most part facebook and twitter was something I could regularly come and go from without much of a problem, but lately I’ve noticed a bit of a change.

I’ve noticed that writing at home five days a week often leaves my extroverted nature feeling a little lonely. Normally when I had this problem I would go write in my favourite cafe for a few hours and be amongst the people there even if I didn’t interact massively (It was almost guaranteed someone I knew would be there or appear after a few hours) I would usually feel a little better.

Since I moved house and out of the immediate vicinity of Bath I’ve not found anywhere quite like my old cafe and as such I often spend all week writing at home (It’s also a lot cheaper). This has led to me seeking some sort of social support from facebook and twitter and while this sort of works, this actually mostly makes me feel lonelier in the long run.

I may post something and get a few comments relatively quickly that I can reply to and feel a brief spark of connection with someone, but it doesn’t last long as people have things to do. And even worse, posting something and having it slip into the oblivion of facebooks ‘what we think you really want to see’ algorithim (it happens a lot more than you’d think). As a result I find myself reaching even more for my phone or tablet to check facebook in a cycle of feeling lonely, reach out on social media, feel even worse, try again. Rinse and Repeat and get so little work done you also feel bad about that.

While I say this, I also have to admit facebook and twitter can be amazing. Facebooks groups, especially are great for finding people like you to talk to and get advice from and I can’t count the number of awesome people I’ve found through retweets on twitter. They can be great, but they need to be approached with caution.