In 2021 I stopped using some social media platforms because I was having some health issues. The health issues weren’t caused by social media but they became worse when I was using it. I cut out three platforms that are known to be challenging for a few reasons. I dealt with the core health issue which wasn’t particularly bad in itself but added stress to my body and then when you encounter other stressors on a platform it can be quite debilitating. My goal for 2022 is to cut out social media even more. There is one platform I still use for promoting my work and engaging with other creatives. The platform itself is very limited but widely used as it is based around mobile technology. What I realised after looking at a desktop platform that I use and pay for, which has no social media focus, there are actually more views over the entire collection of work rather than the latest work which most mobile platforms focus on. So a photo I posted over ten years ago still gets views as it is not limited by mobile technology. People for example can search or go through albums of work on a platform dedicated to professional high-resolution photography and photographic documentation. 

So the mobile platform that I have been promoting work on for a number of years is not searchable, a mobile phone is limited by how many photos it can scroll through, especially when there are thousands of photos. My work basically is an archive you can’t conveniently search through. Even if this feature was added, or a way to make albums and other organisational tools evolved. The problem is that all images uploaded are automatically reduced in size and quality. What I plan on doing then, is to only use the platform for my job, which is based around paint sales. One aspect of that job is selling paint to mural artists who use mobile technology for promotional purposes. What this means for me is ceasing my own promotional work on this social media platform so I can keep my desktop-focused archive active and updated. Then I can use the social media platform to keep engaged with the mural artists I sell paint to and have a point of contact and engagement. A few months ago I couldn’t contact an artist by phone about delivery and I went onto social media and updated them on the delivery details of their paint. 

In cases like that the mobile platform is really good. What I plan on doing is only checking the mobile platform once a week for messages or when something pops up for work. I turned off all notifications quite a while ago on all social media platforms. That in itself reduced a lot of stress and the curiosity that these pointless notifications are meant to arouse to keep you engaged. I think this new approach will keep me in charge of the platforms I use, rather than be dictated to by mobile technologies and social media technologies that are at best highly limited and unhealthy.