Do you remember that time when you were in sixth grade and wanted to fit in, so you dyed your hair blonde (slash orange-ish, because box color is the best), cut bangs, and got brightly colored rubber bands on your braces?
Oh wait – that wasn’t actually how to fit in and was actually my awkward phase?
YIKES.
That probably brought back memories of awkward phase, possibly cringe-worthy ones like mine. Whether it was an unruly haircut, an obsession with dark lipstick, gangly limbs that weren’t quite matched up with the rest of your body, or an insistence on wearing your dad’s old football jersey to school every day, we all went through it. Or rather, those of us of a certain age certainly went through it…
What’s interesting these days is that kids don’t seem to be going through that awkward phase so much. Well, maybe they are, but no one is seeing it. What we’re seeing is perfectly coiffed, staged, filtered, duck-faced images of young humans going on full adulthood. It’s almost like they’re not allowed to have an awkward phase. (Which, I really feel like every person should go through. These are defining life moments, people!)
Anyway, I think we can all agree that living in a culture that focuses on perfection and continues to emphasize certain body and beauty ideals, amplified by the introduction, and subsequent pervasiveness, of social media, has had an impact on this. And we can likely also agree that that’s a really tricky thing to navigate for a lot of people – the parents, the kids, the companies, the collective. How do you draw boundaries? How do you have the conversations? When do you introduce technology? What’s the impact?
It’s an interesting conversation for sure, and just one part of a recent, much longer conversation I had about social media with my friends Sarah and Kristina on their podcast, Our Uncensored Life.
You may remember my email a little while back about social media and distraction. And you may have noticed that I took a month completely off all social media. You may also have been noticing for yourself a lot more content focused on digital minimalism, technology boundaries, curating feeds, intentional connecting, etc. In this podcast episode, we talked about every bit of everything related to every one of those topics.
Honestly, I listened to this episode from start to finish, it was that good. And you know I don’t listen to podcasts. I don’t always even listen to an entire episode that I’m a guest on! But this one, I did. I just kept nodding to myself, like, YES! EXACTLY!
Sarah and Kristina are both incredible women, moms, and entrepreneurs, a totally unstoppable team, and it made for a pretty great match between the three of us to jump right off into this challenging and completely candid conversation. We really got into the nitty gritty of our interactions with social media, its influence in our lives, and we dove more deeply into the questions of distraction and addiction too. We share experiences, we get real about feelings and struggles, all – as you would expect – completely uncensored.
Really, this one is not to be missed.
And the rest of the episodes of Our Uncensored Life? Yeah. Soooooooo good. Sample topics: toxic masculinity (with guest appearances from men who are redefining masculinity in today’s world), women’s hormones, and strong female support systems. Go download the entire playlist.
I’m still kicking around a write-up of my 30-day social media sabbatical and its outcome, but in the meantime, take a listen to this podcast. And then, send me an email and let me know what you think! I’m so, so curious, and every conversation I have with someone about social media is just different enough to continue to stay curious. How are you feeling about social media these days? Distraction? How it’s influencing our kiddos? Oh, and also tell me all about your awkward phase, please 😉
Hope you enjoy the episode!
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