To Scroll or Not to Scroll? That is the Question.
- Room to Be
- Feb 17
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 18
Why are we not on social media? This is the 21st Century people! Most of the population will have some kind of social media account, right? Even if you’ve deleted your Facebook and frozen your Insta in the name of a digital detox, you’re still likely to be on at least, what, a thousand WhatsApp groups, sending voice notes and sharing photos of your family / pets / holidays / dinner to all and sundry. Pepper that with the vids you love to watch on Tik Tok and YouTube, or the eye you like to keep on the vitriol and gossip of X and lo and behold you’re doom scrolling away swathes of your precious day. Well, if we’re honest, we don’t want to take up more of your dwindling free time. Or rather, we DO, but not in that way.
Room to Be is very much about connection. Not virtual connection, but actual connection. The kind of connection that gets you leaving your house and out walking in nature, or chatting with real three-dimensional fleshy humans over a hot chocolate at a local café, or playing board games on a rainy weekend, or GARDENING. Oh my god, don’t get Emile started on gardening, he will chew your actual ear off.
BUT, you might argue, social media has its benefits, right? It helps you retain your friendship with your mate who lives abroad and your pal from primary school who you haven’t seen in twenty years. It keeps you notified on what’s going on in the wider world or the events at the local pub and disco… (do people still use the word ‘disco’?) It tracks your every move to streamline wonderful offers and must-have deals that you simply would never know about if you weren’t logged in. It gives you a wee dopamine hit every time you post something that gets a thumbs up or a love heart or a laughy-face emoji. There are POSITIVES to being on social media, right? RIGHT?
Sure. We are not going to dispute that. But with increasing, well-researched evidence that shows how social media can negatively impact mental health, create patterns of addictive behaviour, disrupt sleep, cause anxiety and expose users to cyberbullying, harassment and inappropriate content (apparently this is called ‘free speech’ these days), we have decided not to be a part of it. Radical. But the whole premise behind Room to Be is to care about mental health and wellbeing, to connect people with the world outside and the wider community, to give opportunities to make art, to write poetry, to meet new people, maybe even make new friends.
Room to Be is also about supporting our LGBTQIA+ community. Earlier this year Meta took the decision to review their fact checking system and Hate Speech Policy. It is no longer forbidden to insult someone based on their race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender, sexuality or any other protected characteristic which we have come to value as an intrinsic part of safeguarding and Diversity, Inclusivity and Equality policy. Now Meta legitimately allows users to label anyone from under the rainbow banner as 'mentally ill', 'abnormal' or 'weird'. Women can be described as 'household objects'. Transgender people can be described as 'it'.
“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.’”
This is not an online world we want to be a part of.
Of course, we know that we will not have the same level of clout or outreach if we don’t sign up and promote Room to Be across multiple platforms. We know that fundraising will be trickier. We know that there will be people in Dundee and Tayside who might never hear about us because they haven’t seen the poster at Cake or Dice or at the local library. That’s why we need you to spread the word. Tell your non-binary mate, your queer uncle, your auntie who is a devout ally. Hang a poster on a lamppost. Stick a flyer on the supermarket noticeboard. Yep, you can even use your own social media if you want to. This may seem hypocritical, but we don't have our eyes closed and fingers in our ears 'la-la-la-la' regarding the influence social media has for positive causes and success stories. Our featured artist, Federico Clapis, was a social media sensation before using his platform to share his art. So work that frontline for us! Post, repost, we are shamelessly a social media parasite, and YOU can be our host. But if ever you do decide that enough is enough and you want to stop scrolling and start strolling… (urgh, sorry, that was bad)… then trust us, we know, we get it, we already have. Come find us. Let’s make some art. Let’s build a garden.
