Tag: social media

Writing

The Dark Side of Social Media: Fasting from Noise, Not Just Apps

Alexandra Diane

A landmark lawsuit, filed in February 2026, claims that multiple social media platforms are destructive and addictive. It’s hard to deny they are anything other than addictive when students and adults spend countless hours with their phones and tablets glued to their hands. Social media is replacing genuine human interaction, and skills that took centuries to craft have vanished over the past decade. Parents and caretakers offer ‌younger generations screens to cure boredom, hindering their imaginations. 

But why are these devices so addicting? What are they replacing? Are they giving their users validation that they may be missing? Is it used as a distraction from their problems? Or are they spending more time comparing themselves to lifestyles they may never achieve?

It’s that and so much else. 

Social media was meant to connect the world;instead, it has become an escape for most who use it; myself included. 

Every Lenten season for the past decade I have given up social media. This year was no exception. In fact, the night before Ash Wednesday, I created my post and deleted all apps from my phone. 2026 may have only just begun, but it has been a nightmare. The rabbit holes I was falling into were consuming my thoughts on and off the apps. This cleanse was coming at the perfect time. I needed to be held accountable for letting go of the doomscrolling. I lost so much time I could have been writing to bed rot. 

To say I was looking for an escape and distraction is an understatement. The 2025/2026 school year brought up a lot of traumatizing emotions I thought I had handled. I tried to run away from this career like I had done in the past,t but God didn’t allow it. I interviewed for multiple jobs, and a few were tempting, but each time I thought about leaving, I didn’t want to let my students down. The group of boys who are graduating this year have been with me since I started my teaching career, and I want to see them graduate. 

It wasn’t until after Thanksgiving break that I became comfortable in my classroom again. But the doomscrolling wasn’t in vain. I found different camera and lighting techniques to passive aggressively teach my students by sharing them as reels. Skills that I learned twenty years ago and forgotten from lack of use to new and interesting things that have been developed with the technology available. Saving post after post, I added them to my curriculum.

I told myself that my free time this way was productive. But I didn’t just stay on my film teacher account. When I switched over to my author account, the algorithm changed. No longer did I discover other indie authors or find out what BookTok readers were interested in. All the Catholic content creators were lost. Instead, I found myself inundated with horoscopes and political content. My personal account had become flooded with judgy mom content, a shift from the silly animal reels and period pieces it once displayed.. 

I will not pretend that I didn’t look at the political content. I worked in the news world for far too long to pretend that the world didn’t exist. But I try to look at both sides and discover the truth somewhere in between. But after Charlie Kirk was murdered, the algorithm decided that’s all I needed to see. No matter how often I searched for and liked my old content, it was lost. I couldn’t reset what I had been viewing. 

When the Epstein files dropped, the algorithm became pure chaos. Both left and right produced so much content my feed became hopelessly covered by creators I didn’t know. Truth, lies, slander, and hate were all the posts I was seeing. What was the point of all of it? I got angry about the politicians and the elite class being demonic, vile beings. But at the same time I remember stories from girls I went to high school with bragging about going with “some rich dude to his private island and partying all weekend.” Having my past blend with the present did something to my mind. I wanted to be angry at these people in power abusing young boys and girls but I was also so angry at their parents. Like where the fuck were they?

The post that broke me and made me remove all the noise was a post about Australia. Someone broke HIPPA and released that a botched abortion left a baby to die sucking its thumb. I thought there could be no possible way that a first world country doctor would be so evil as to let a baby die alone. How could someone who promised to do no harm would let an innocent life suffer? I am not questioning the woman’s decision,but I am questioning the doctors. You failed. SAVE THE CHILD. Your failure shouldn’t be why a baby suffers. I looked it up thinking that this post was rage bait. It wasn’t. I swallowed vomit and then hugged my children. 

This world is cruel and social media puts it on display every single day. Screaming into the void has become normal. I don’t want any of this to be normal. Can social media do some good? Sure. That’s how I am able to share my writing with the world. But there was a time that people knew how to search the internet and find things without it being handed to them on a crafted platter. I wish we could go back to that.

Lent

The Season of Lent: 40 days of Prayer & Writing

Alexandra Diane

With bloganuary completed and lent right around the corner, I have taken a bit of a break from writing. During Bloganuary, I completed all but two topics and posts, and for lent, I will be engaging in 40 days of writing and 40 days without social media. In the past, my decision to give up social media has not conflicted with my life. It was a chance to detox from the endless scrolling, focus on my writing, and reconnect with what matters most. But this year things will be different. Last fall my husband joined the rec baseball board. Because of my work for our travel team, they put my husband in charge of the rec social media accounts. While he does a lot, I am the one who creates and posts most of the content. After Valentine’s day this year, which just so happens to fall on Ash Wednesday, he will take over the posts. I’m curious to see how things go.

My goal this season is to take those endless hours of mindless scrolling and polish off Angelic Findings. For more than a decade, this manuscript has haunted me. However, I am glad that I have spent that time working through all the learning curves. Angelic Findings is the story I started after college. My brain felt broken after five years of academic writing. Creativity was staunched as I wrote analytical essay after analytical essay. The first ten drafts of Angelic Findings were so dry I could have started a fire with them. I didn’t hate it, but I discovered something. Every time I reworked the story, Cassandra evolved. Which is normal and should happen, but she wasn’t just reflecting on the events happening in the world of Angelic Findings. She was a mirror of my emotions. One that I wasn’t aware of was pouring onto the pages. I discovered this about nine years ago when my first marriage fell apart. I was back from Brazil, not knowing if Florida would be my home again, when I read the manuscript as an audience member, not a writer. Witnessing Cassandra being manipulated by someone who claimed to care for her was unbearable. So I shelved the project. 

I abandoned that world, needing fresh eyes and a healed soul before I could revisit it. I dove deep into writing for myself. Short stories that soothed my soul before weren’t enough. I was searching for something. Something that would let me feel whole again. I think that is when I started to blog, needing to get my feelings out. But, I always felt journaling was ridiculous. I don’t know why pen to paper was an alien concept for me. I have bookshelves filled with journals. But those are for stories. Not my pain. Maybe I feared that seeing my thoughts in black and white like blood on a page was too much.

One night I was texting with a friend about my writing. I told him how things were different. Writing fantasy has become difficult. For such a long time, it served as my sole source of solace. But I don’t need that anymore. I am happy with my life. I didn’t need the worlds I used to create to escape anymore. Yes, I still get depressed, but I turn to my husband. I live in reality to heal myself. Writing fantasy had to become something more than just a bandaid for my emotions. It needed to become a world I would want to visit while I am happy. 

Ravenmaster was a happy place. It’s why I could finish my book and not totally hate it. Could it be better? Yes. The second book will be much better…and longer. I am also using the season of lent and my 40 days of writing to work on the Motivation that drives Molly and Liam outside of just surviving. I want them to achieve their goals and fall in love. To heal with one another because they just survived something that should have killed them.

So while I may not be sharing my post on social media, I will still be writing. Sometimes WordPress works with me and the share button actually shares things. Which is great. But be sure to stop by from time to time to see what I am writing because from February 14th until March 28th, there will be radio silence from me. 

Writing

The Art of Complaing

Alexandra Diane
Bloganuary writing prompt
What do you complain about the most?
View all responses

I read today’s prompt in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep. I thought of a thousand things that I have complained about in my life, but none I wanted to write about. Instead, I thought of the why. Why do we waste our energy complaining? What is the benefit of speaking about things that upset us and make us uncomfortable, and that’s when it hit me? If no one complained, nothing would get changed. 

Twenty years ago, when I was diagnosed with celiac, the food was awful. Nearly every food blog or message board about celiac disease brought up the problem. Not only was most of the food hardly editable, it was impossible to go out to eat. Most restaurants trivialized the autoimmune disease. The rollout was slow, but as more people drew attention to the subject, the availability of delicious gluten-free foods increased. Restaurants have become proactive with their menus and some have put forth an effort into controlling cross contamination. 

While complaining can get roads fixed or spread awareness about problems going on in a community. It allows those who may be unaffected by a problem to become aware of a situation at hand. However, this can also cause issues within itself. 

Sometimes the squeaky wheel is just that…squeaky. 

Twitter, or X as it has been rebranded but not really adopted, perfectly exemplifies a dumpster fire of people complaining over things that don’t really matter. People complain about actresses in children’s movies. They fight over politics, and not about local government that they can actually effect. No, they bitch and moan over who has the best horrible candidate out there. Social media has taken complaining to a new level. One where everyone feels entitled to lament over their miniscule problems. 

If you can’t tell, I was just complaining there 😉 

But I don’t see any problem complaining to friends and family. Sometimes venting is the only thing that keeps us from exploding on those who may deserve it but can’t handle the response. Sometimes we need that outlet to share our feelings. There are many who think just because you may complain, it means you don’t care. But obviously, you care enough about something to bring about your disinterest in it. 

Lent

Day 40: 40 days and 40 nights of not interacting with social media

Alexandra Diane

After 40 days and 40 nights of not interacting with social media, I don’t think I’ll be adding it back to my life. I woke up and checked my notifications. There was nothing that I truly missed. There was nothing on any of the apps that required my attention. I added the apps after Easter dinner and deleted them before midnight.

I finished reading book two of the new series I started last week and picked up my phone. Instead of checking to see if I turned my alarms back on. I opened Instagram and Facebook. I didn’t even really interact with the app. I just cleared my notifications. It all just felt like an empty habit. I got no enjoyment from what I was reading, and as I scrolled through my timeline and saw people’s pictures pop up, I felt sick. Everything about it felt voyeuristic and empty.

I discovered a friend of mine had a baby while I was on my detox. I also learned another friend had been pregnant and delivered the daughter she so desperately wanted this Easter morning. Out of the two women, I only knew one was pregnant. I thought it was strange how I felt nothing while looking at their tiny cute babies.

However, I’m not a cold-hearted ice queen. One of my longest friends gave birth to twins a week ago. I knew they were due on a Monday; however, I couldn’t remember what Monday. Time slipped by, and I texted her about the babies on Thursday morning, asking when they were arriving. Instantly bombarded with pictures of two adorable faces and a phone call. My friend apologized for forgetting I gave up social for lent and not letting me know the twins arrived. It baffled me. If anyone should have been apologizing, it was me. She just brought two tiny humans into the world. The least of her concern should have been the weird person breaking away from social norms.

We talked. We caught up. She sounded amazing. It felt real and meaningful. Nothing like I felt when I reconnected with the thing marketed as the best way to communicate.

My time away has been healing. I don’t feel the need to always have my phone on me. I am less anxious when I see my notification light go off. One of the biggest things is I feel my interactions are more human. What I know about my friends is what they want to share with me, not what I stalkers learned about them while silently watching their lives through a screen.

I’m not deactivating my accounts, but apps aren’t going on my phone. I will randomly check things on a web browser, but nothing like I used to. For the short time I had the apps on my phone; they were trying to occupy my time. I turned off notifications. However, whenever I opened an app, it asked if I wanted to turn on notifications. I don’t need that kind of bullying in my life. I already told it no multiple times. It was forcing itself on me.


So here’s to newfound freedom. I hope we all can break away from this false reality someday.

Lent, Teaching

Day 38: The danger of misinformation, especially with school safety

Alexandra Diane

Today was a shit show and a half. But the chaos started the day before. 

We were in code red before the first period was over. Only this time, it wasn’t a drill. My students were outstanding. We all went to the secure location, and everyone was silent. While we waited for a clear, all I could think about were the students out filming. Not even five minutes after the code started, the all-clear was called. 

When my students returned to my class, I asked them where they had gone. Some entered other teachers’ rooms, some entered the bathrooms, and others headed to grade-level offices. Two students told me they left the camera rolling when they ran off. I said that’s fine; maybe you captured something interesting. However, a few told me they were worried about the equipment. I reminded them I could always buy new cameras. I couldn’t purchase their life back if the unthinkable happened. 

Finally, the last three students returned to class. And boy, did they have a story. They were recording as the incident began. A male student had become hostile and was verbally threatening a teacher. The girls were packing up. They didn’t want him to break the camera. He was punching the doors and shouting at any and all authority that came near him. Before that could return to class, the code red started. They left the gear and went to a secure location. They could still hear the student yelling and threatening as the Administration detained the hostile student. Two of the three girls said they were concerned about his behavior, and my third said she wanted to stay and get footage because it would be a good news story. I joked and said, “Well, we know who the future newscaster will be. But in all seriousness, your safety is the number one priority.” 

We all went about our day, and aside from thinking about how well our students handled the situation, I gave little thought to it. 

This morning we had our monthly faculty meeting, and we found out the teacher didn’t mean to activate the code red. Although I think it was good, who knows if the Hostile student could have lashed out at an unexpected student walking in the halls? We learned that pressing our emergency badges three times, pausing, and then pressing them three times again counts as six times. And if they were pressed after that, it activates a code red. We all assumed that pushing it three times would alert the administration that they were needed in the room, and if we waited a moment or two in between that, it would just reactivate the administration call. Most of our teachers didn’t realize that even if there were moments between the three punches, it would activate a code red, which is what happened. 

When we arrived at school today, there was more police activity on campus than usual. Most of them chalked it up to the code red. That was until the principal told us the suspended student had posted a threat on social media. The principal wasn’t even aware of the danger until he arrived on campus. We have an extremely good system where parents and students can report social media threats or any threat. However, our local police force was on our campus faster than the reporting system this time. Somebody had notified them about the student making a threat to our school. Our principal had just found out this information not too soon before our meeting started. Our principal is amazing and very transparent with the teachers, the students, and their parents. He composed a message to inform us that there was a report and that the police were already handling the situation, which he sent out once our meeting was completed. However, that wasn’t soon enough.

Students were already making their way to campus in the morning. Those who travel by bus leave insanely early, and many parents drop off their students before school hours because they have to go to work. So while we were in the meeting, students were already on social media sharing the post that the student had threatened the school. And they panicked without knowing that the situation was being handled. They did not give us a chance to calm the storm before it took place. The rumor mill had already begun. 

This was probably the most dangerous part of the day. Teenagers gossiping. Students are not talking to adults but to each other, exaggerating and making the situation worse. Kids were already calling and texting their parents, asking to be picked up. Parents calling the school jammed the phone lines, limiting communication. 

But while there were kids that were worried and calling their parents, those who wanted to be sure the Administration saw every single post made. They wanted to ensure everyone was aware of the situation, and I was so proud of these things. They wanted to make sure that there was no possibility of anything wrong. Unfortunately, things became worse when rumors grew.

This was when I started getting emails from parents asking me what was happening. I told them everything was normal, and we were all fine. I asked where they heard things, and they said a teacher told their children the suspended student had returned to school. Which I knew was not true. I reassured them that everything was safe and that even though everything was safe, out of an abundance of caution, we had an excessive amount of police force on campus. Then some parents sent me screenshots of the local community input people were saying. Some parents didn’t even have children on our campus and were spreading lies. And then the thing that pissed me off the most happened. My former news station reported that we were in a code yellow. Code yellow is when teachers are still teaching but restrict the movement in the halls unless absolutely necessary. We were not in a code yellow. We were not in a code anything. It was a normal day being blown out of proportion by people spreading lies and rumors. This was ensuing chaos. One mother complained that it took an hour for her to pick up her child. Not only was there an excessive number of parents picking up their kids, but they must vet every single person who was picking up a student. The administration was not just going to allow anybody to come to pick up kids randomly. It always has to be checked, and there were parents complaining about that. 

Today was a fucking joke, and it wasn’t because of our administration. They were doing more than necessary to be open with all the parents. They did everything possible to ensure safety. And they were trying to keep the students on campus calm. Unfortunately, worried parents made the situation worse.

I fully understand the concern, but social media’s gossip mill made things awful. News stations reporting with false information made it even worse. Adults and students alike spreading lies and gossiping made things atrocious. Teachers were with the students all day. We were calming nerves dealing with those having panic attacks. This put us under a lot of stress and pressure to make sure all students were okay and safe. Not just physically but mentally as well. Some teachers taught while others, like myself, turned on a movie and tried to distract the students from thinking of anything negative.

Adults need to be smarter. They need to stop gossiping and spreading rumors, and inciting horrible comments about things they do not know what is going on. Some parents were saying how their students were telling them a different story than what the principal was saying and calling the principal a liar. Our principal is anything but a liar. The students’ safety is his number one priority, and today he took every precaution. Our administrative staff in the front office were dealing with hostile parents, who were making the situation worse than it needed to be. Parents need to remember these are middle schoolers. There is a total no chance that their precious little babies would exaggerate the situation. I heard them exaggerating the situation. There were rumors spreading that an administrator got into a fight with the suspended student and was in the hospital, and there were people that actually believed it. Which I found absolutely absurd, since the man was walking around campus unharmed and obviously not in a hospital.

I truly understand people being concerned and worried. But they need to be smart. They don’t need to make a situation worse. And that is all that happened today. Gossip, rumors, news stations sharing false information. All of this caused more chaos and is not helpful.

I can’t believe this is my second post in less than 40 days about the chaos in schools.

Lent

Day 19: Life off social media

Alexandra Diane

Today I received a message from a friend who I haven’t talked to in a while. She forwarded me a message about one of our high school classmates who passed away. Until the message this afternoon, I hadn’t seen nor did anyone bring up that a classmate died. It’s crazy knowing that on February 22, I deleted all my social media apps from my phone and logged out of them from my computer, and our classmate passed away four days later. I found out about her nineteen days later. 

When I decided to do this social media detox, I wondered what I would miss. I thought of my friends who just had babies posting pictures or maybe missing out on living vicariously through my friends who don’t have kids and watching their travels. But I didn’t think it would be something this tragic. 

Life has gotten crazy. With three kids, a full-time job, and just as many sports that it feels like another full-time job, I’ve been slacking in the friend department. I am disappointed with how much I rely on social media to keep up with friends and families, especially those living out of state. 

My girlfriend, who sent me the message lives in California. We haven’t seen each other in nearly eight years, but I follow her life through the screen in my hand. There have been times when I wanted to reach out and see how she was doing, but social media has a way of tricking you into believing that you know what’s happening in everyone’s lives. I hate feeling like I’m inconveniencing people, so it’s much easier to like a picture and leave a comment than to reach out. 

We talked a little, asked how each other was doing and joked about how we were much happier in our second marriage. We talked about how we should be better about reaching out. It’s a routine repeated over and over again as we all get busy with life. We’ll send messages on holidays and birthdays, but nothing significant until something eventful happens.