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Talk about about what it's like to use social media during this pandemic.

I stopped using Facebook 5 months ago, on my son's birthday. The day before, I started a bunch of arguments, and I didn't want to ruin his birthday by being sucked into my phone. After that, I just kind of dreaded logging on again, and the more time went by, the more I noticed the benefits to my mental health. And I noticed how much participating in social media had been making me get so angry at people - old friends, family, strangers, what have you. Since then, I spent a little time on Reddit under a pseudonym, but even there, after a while I found myself just getting so pissed at people that I'd come online to notifications and just not be willing to even look at them. I haven't gone back there for probably a couple months. I have a twitter account, but I never post. I just watch some people that I think are funny or interesting. It's nice to see what gossip is going around, and how people are reacting to the news. Yeah, we can all read the news, but if you want to see what people think about it, you have to go to some form of social media these days. Even twitter is starting to ruin my days and make it hard to sleep at night, though. I know there have been happiness studies that found that the most reliable way to increase your happiness is to stop paying attention to the news. What does that say about current events? What does it say about the pursuit of happiness? Of course social media sucks, and anyone can list the reasons why. But I think something about me has changed as the pandemic wears on as well, that has made me less tolerant of it. In normal times, I was already the kind of guy who, if I went to a party, I'd have trouble sleeping for a night or two. I've just always been sensitive socially, in the sense that I'm easily overstimulated. And it's not like I can't adapt to more social contact - I've performed on stage, I've taught classes, I go out to plenty of things. But it's a level of tolerance that has to be maintained - I adapt to the level of social contact I have in my everyday life. And now, my threshold has dropped, probably to an all-time low, to the point where even social media contact is a little overwhelming. The only really surprising thing to me is the aggression I feel in response to it. I just get absolutely, head-swimmingly furious with people. I suppose that has to do with the way interactions are mediated through these platforms, because that's just never happened in person for me. So, mostly I just stay away. I have a feed reader with all my favorite publications that I can scroll through whenever I feel the urge. I watch talks on Youtube, which can feel almost like a social gathering because everyone's in their house wearing sweats. Andddd that's basically it.