Hello friends,

Happy Social Media Day! (whatever that is supposed to mean? 🤔)

In media news, I recently did an interview with Niall Breslin (aka Bressie) on his 'Where Is My Mind?' podcast which you may enjoy https://open.spotify.com/episode/2NqUtZOWNbHzOihhXnFSFB?si=S3a78ZfdQSqksmRdyRs7sg&nd=1. This was heavily focussed on WhatsApp which, as readers will know, I don't consider to be social media per se, but it is still one of those extremely pervasive and powerful technologies that we can't seem to escape from very easily. One of the things we spoke about was the 'Last Online' indicator (apparently being used by stalkers) and how to turn it off (which you can read about here). This is yet another example of the deepening surveillance of the covid era. Has anyone successfully moved their social circle to Signal?

I also did an interview with Marlon Jimenez-Compton for Dublin South FM, which airs tomorrow (11am, 93.9FM) and hopefully will be available on podcast shortly after. This was quite a special one too - I'm very lucky at the moment to be working with such great interviewers. Marlon is a former student of mine from a long time ago and also works as a content moderator for Facebook so we had a really deep and meaningful conversation which I hope you'll enjoy.

And finally, I gave some comments to Tanyel Mustafa for an article in the Metro 'How social media likes can save, renew or maintain a connection'. This is about the psychology of the 'contentless message' that is the infamous Like - and the problems of interpretation.

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Furthermore, in idea news, for a while now I've been thinking about all the work I've done with the media. 2021 marks a decade of publicly commenting on matters cyberpsychological (I'll root out the very first one if anyone is interested?). What does it amount to? Does it actually cut through? I don't think so. Is it possible to cut through, at all? well, I'm going to try a different angle and find out. I feel that I can respond to the kind of questions which the public seem to be interested in (via the media engagements) in a more effective way.

So what I'm proposing is a guided online course - part on-demand video content, part live q&a sessions, spread out over ten weeks. I've got a rough idea of the kind of topic area that I'll be covering - the general psychology of social media naturally; mindfulness online, digital minimalism, along with practical advice and techniques to develop better control over one's being online, as well as tackling burning issues like the nature of social media addiction, battling screentime, and how to make digital detoxes actually work - but I am open to suggestions - so if you have any ideas, do drop me a line.

I'm aiming to launch this in the autumn so if you'd like to hear more, hit the waitlist below!

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Very best,

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Ciarán

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