Is the social media growth over?¹ Perhaps. Proof means that whereas individuals are nonetheless on social media, they’re utilizing it much less. It’s not too stunning, provided that we now not want social media as a lifeline to our social world. We’re again at work and college and out wandering round. We frequently overlook, nonetheless, that social media, like all our gadgets, is only a software. When the issues we’re doing change, so do the instruments we use. Nevertheless, recurring behaviors usually go unnoticed, and the pandemic undoubtedly created new patterns and habits. It’s the right time to do a private media SWOT evaluation and see in case your media use aligns together with your present objectives.

Understanding SWOT for Private Progress

SWOT—an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Alternatives, and Threats—is an strategy most often utilized by organizations. Nevertheless, it may be utilized to any particular person or exercise to take inventory of the present state of affairs and determine what’s working nicely and what isn’t. Throughout COVID, social media stuffed a void. It supplied a much-needed sense of connection. It was additionally a supply of leisure and stress reduction. We have been enamored with the explosion of TikTok’s straightforward, genuine, and uncooked movies and their sense of social presence. We texted and Zoomed in for household occasions. We repeatedly streamed “The Workplace” and “Mates,” and we flocked to YouTube movies to be taught knitting, butter churning, and yoga.

Supply: South Company/Getty Photographs

Psychological Lengthy COVID

Regardless of all that media, the pandemic was a interval of extended stress. Persistent stress, as you realize, is dangerous. When the fight-or-flight system stays turned on, dangerous issues can occur, together with poor sleep high quality, post-traumatic stress signs, nervousness, melancholy² and elevated stress reactivity.³ We additionally went by two-plus years the place our in-person social expertise lay dormant.

The pandemic left us hypersensitive, fearful, and suspicious with rusty interpersonal expertise. Getting again into the social swing of issues may be more durable than we’d like. Social applied sciences are nice however just a little too straightforward when different issues are arduous. Social media is a poor substitute for connection when individuals can bodily get collectively, and in-person is the one approach to remaster our interpersonal expertise. This doesn’t imply social media has no use, but it surely does imply that we should always consider what our media behaviors are doing to help the place we’d wish to be now reasonably than the place we’ve been.

SWOT evaluation is an train that forces us to see the place we’re so we will make purposeful choices that help our objectives and future development reasonably than simply carry on keepin’ on. It helps us actively pursue alternatives, whereas recognizing the methods during which we’re weak to danger and setbacks.

Conducting a Media SWOT Evaluation

To make any change, from eating regimen and train to interpersonal communication, it’s essential to have a baseline and a purpose. The affect of media use is tough to quantify, however the purpose is to not win a prize for math however to determine if the way in which we use media and expertise positively or negatively contributes to our lives.

Step 1: Objectives

Decide the objectives you wish to obtain and write them down. Everyone seems to be completely different. You can begin with long-term, big-picture objectives or smaller targets. You may break them down into classes like skilled, relationships, and private improvement; subjective experiences, akin to happiness, creativity, and that means; or roles, akin to mother, daughter, and pal. Occupied with media use in relation to your objectives is the essential half.

Step 2: Knowledge Gathering

Log your media and expertise use in a diary for a number of days or per week. Analysis has repeatedly proven that self-monitoring will increase consciousness of our behavioral patterns and offers some perception into the circumstances and triggers round these behaviors.⁴ Self-monitoring is central to self-regulation, whether or not it’s eating regimen, train, or media use. If we don’t precisely assess what we’re doing, we don’t know what behaviors make sense to vary. Retaining a log can also be essential as a result of individuals are not good at mentally estimating a day’s actions with accuracy. For instance, individuals are inclined to underestimate calorie consumption by 20-50% and overestimate train effort by 36-173%. ⁵ Measures of media use are additionally troublesome, however you’re making an attempt to determine common tendencies, so what you’re doing and why is extra essential than how lengthy you’re doing it.

In your media/tech diary (analog or digital), be aware once you use completely different gadgets or functions, your motivation, and the affect in your feelings. Make it straightforward, so that you’ll do it. Listed below are some concepts of what to trace. (It is a good train for teenagers, too.)

Media Diary Urged Columns

Pamela Rutledge

Step 3: Evaluation

After you have information, you need to use the worksheet under and begin to consider how your media and expertise use helps or hindering your objectives by use versus outcomes. Search for patterns. TikTok may be enjoyable and enjoyable, but it surely will also be guilt-inducing if it turns right into a time suck. Checking your e-mail generally is beneficial to your work. Different occasions, it is likely to be a product of your nervousness. Checking your texts generally is likely to be essential to your relationships, however different occasions it is likely to be an pointless technique of procrastination. Search for patterns. When does one thing go from constructive to destructive? What quantity of engagement makes one thing constructive or additive, and when does it detract?

Now that you simply’ve gotten to know your media use patterns, you are able to do the SWOT evaluation. Relying in your considerations, you may lump media collectively (all the pieces with screens) or break up issues out, like social media, smartphones, or video games. Add your individual questions. Then, consider your behaviors based mostly on every quadrant.

Media Use SWOT Evaluation

Pamela Rutledge

Turning Media Habits into Intentions

Folks use the very best instruments accessible to satisfy their objectives, however two years of COVID-19 materially shifted media behaviors to offset social isolation. The sense of belonging from social connections is likely one of the main drivers of human conduct and is crucial to our psychological and bodily well being. Media use was an adaptive conduct, turning into an computerized response to keep up belonging reasonably than an intentional motion.

As we skilled through the pandemic, a digital connection is healthier than no connection. Nevertheless, people are social animals, hardwired for face-to-face interplay. The easy act of shaking fingers prompts the mind’s reward middle, builds belief, will increase attentional focus, and enhances emotional contagion. Your life and media use could also be completely balanced. But when not, the SWOT train is a approach to check out your media habits and ensure pandemic media behaviors haven’t leaked over the place they’re not useful.