Future of Work Roundtable: Our Relationship with Social Media

Setting boundaries, using it for our careers — what we really think about social media

Each month we’re selecting a topic related to the future of work, and getting our team’s hot, lukewarm and cold takes.

The Groove team lives all around the world and brings a wide array of life experiences to the work Groove does -> We’re bringing you a global view on the hottest WFH tea.

Groove recently gave up most social media, so this month, we’re asking:

What’s your relationship with social media?

How do you use it for your career, how do you use it personally, what boundaries do you set, any doubts you have?

Tova Safra, Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer:

I have had a relationship with social media that has flip-flopped between positive and negative over the years. When I was running a design business, social platforms were indispensable to me in order to be able to meet relevant people and find clients. There was also a time when I did manage to meet people in my neighborhood via Facebook groups and form meaningful relationships with them offline. I even found an apartment that way in a tough rental market. That’s the positive side…

The negative side is that doing those things takes so much time! For every friendship with any depth to it, I’ve wasted probably tens if not hundreds of hours of my life on social media scrolling through trash. I think if we judged all our tools by how much time or effort we need to put in, vs how much we get out of it, social media stacks up as a pretty awful one — it’s just the most accessible option right now, especially for small businesses. Social platforms are designed so that the effort you put in feels like it’s nothing (ie “just” scrolling) and meanwhile you’re wasting so much of your life away.

I think if we judged all our tools by how much time or effort we need to put in, vs how much we get out of it, social media stacks up as a pretty awful one — it’s just the most accessible option right now, especially for small businesses.

Another negative effect I have seen happen over the years with some women my age is that they want their real face to look a little bit like an Instagram filter. I’m not a fan of how these channels can distort how we see our true selves.

As an artist, I’ve recently been using a combination of Twitter + Clubhouse to make meaningful connections over voice. It works because voice conversations force people to be somewhat more attentive to one another, and I also operate within a very tiny niche. I filter out everything and everyone else because I’m so focused on meeting a specific kind of person, and having dialog around a specific type of creative work. I have learned not to pay attention to follower count on those platforms because it never seems to correspond to anything real. By focusing on the content and dialogue itself, I find true value.

Taylor Harrington, Head of Community:

It’s a work in progress with boundaries.

Looking at my career thus far, in college, I ran social accounts for local businesses, student start-ups, The Ad Council, my personal Etsy business, and other student-run organizations. Creating social media campaigns and designing content on Canva was baked into my education. It seemed like a gateway to get to do more meaningful work; a chance to learn through doing and say, “Hey, look I made this!”

After that, I was hired to create content that “shows up differently on Instagram” with best-selling author, Seth Godin, who had no presence on Instagram at the time. It began with the intention to create content that had a clear audience, served them value, and sparked an abnormal behavior on Instagram worth talking about. Seth’s an author, so we created mini books. On Seth’s Instagram, you could literally read a book and “flip” through the pages.

I managed content calendars, spent hours creating content, hired support, and thought a lot about how to move faster. My favorite part of all of it was DMing with people, that 1:1 connecting that wasn’t scalable, but it made a difference in my day and that person’s because that was a chance to say, “You’re not alone. There’s someone here on the other side of all of this.” It didn’t matter that I wasn’t Seth, answering his DMs. I told them it was me and they were still so grateful that a human read their message. Sometimes, it even turned into a funny audio message conversation back and forth.

When I started looking for my next career move, I thought, I don’t want to run social media accounts again. I want to do more of that connecting happening in DMs at scale — to help more people feel real connection in an online world of, often, disconnection.

Plus, on top of that, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, I really started to reevaluate my relationship with social media. What purpose was it serving in my life?

In March of 2020, I started walking, like a lot of people did — to clear my head, but mostly, on the off chance, I’d get to see another human on the road.

It was then, walking around my childhood neighborhood for hours each week, that I discovered Catherine Price’s work. First, I listened to this podcast episode. Then, I bought her book How to Break Up With Your Phone and followed her 30-day suggested plan. It wasn’t a cold turkey-type breakup; I changed my relationship over time and reflected deeply on what matters most to me in forming a healthier space for social media in my life.

Since that month-long experiment, I’ve played around with how I consume and interact with social media in different seasons.

A few things I’ve learned…

• I love taking photos of beautiful things and not holding onto those images just for me, but I don’t need to share them with people who know me. Instead of sharing them on Instagram, I’ve shifted to posting them on a photography app. They’re there just so I can see them and ship my creative pictures out somewhere in the world.
• I haven’t had any traditional social media apps downloaded on my phone for a while now. No Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, LinkedIn, and despite being a Gen-Zer, I’ve never downloaded TikTok. I learned that I was opening these apps because it was a habit, rather than really wanting to intentionally spend my time on there. So, if I really want to log in, I can do so in my phone browser, but it takes time to type out my password and decide if this is the choice I want to make. I have time limits in place to spend less than 10–15 minutes on those platforms a day, including on my computer. Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are the only ones that I go on these days. Snapchat, I dropped altogether as a platform I use.
• Creating these boundaries and reevaluating my social media hygiene has helped me realize how much time I can spend doing other things. I’ve fallen in love with other ways to spend my time on and off my phone: reading (whether it’s an audiobook, article in my Pocket app, a fiction book, or community book), playing Sudoku or board games, walking, cycling, and brain exercises.

When I do go on social media now, it’s typically with a purpose. Twitter is the platform I use the most now. It helps me connect with other start-up and community leaders in a way that feels much more casual than LinkedIn — I’ve met friends, been invited to community leader events, and have spread my ideas through Twitter. I don’t think too much about my tweets. If something is alive and it might add value to someone else, I toss it out there in the world.

When I do go on social media now, it’s typically with a purpose.

Instagram is a way for me to stay in touch with what friends are up to when we don’t talk all the time. I find that the 10-minute limit helps satisfy that check-in, beyond that I’m doomscrolling.

LinkedIn I’m trying to spend less time on. I used it a lot in my previous job, by going live and sharing upcoming events and workshops. A lot of our customers were on there. Now, I find more value personally and professionally in interacting on Twitter. There, I can bond with others over our ideas vs. what’s on our profiles and in our resumes.

When I think about the future of social platforms in the digital world, I believe there’s a chance for new emerging platforms to show up differently — to bring value and positivity into people’s lives that reinforce positive behaviors and time off our screens, that help us connect and reach our goals more, that don’t focus on status and followers.

There’s an opportunity for gathering online to look and feel different. To be a place of empowerment and collaboration, not for comparison and for stealing people’s attention to what’s happening off-screen. I believe the more we can create spaces for people to show up as their full selves and support them to thrive, the better.

Resources/tips that have really worked for me on this journey to change my relationship with social media:

• Freedom plug-in
• Apple screen time limits
• Changing how my apps appear on my phone. On the front page of my phone, I only have the date and time, on the next page I have apps that I think are worth spreading some time on if I’m going to be on my phone, and the last page, I have other apps. But, rarely do I swipe to page 3 unless it’s intentional.
• How to Break Up With Your Phone
• Some of my favorite apps to spend time on these days: Pocket, Elevate, Libby, Thisissand, Goodreads, Wordle

Josh Greene, Co-Founder and CEO:

In short: I hate social media.

To expand: As with everyone, I have a complicated relationship with social media.

I’ve never really played the game of content creation. It’s far too involved.

I remember when I installed Instagram, I probably took 10 photos. I don’t browse Instagram. I don’t find it nourishing. It never interested me.

Twitter only piqued my curiosity for professional reasons. Not for personal reasons. I don’t find myself sitting and browsing Twitter for hours on end unless there’s some kind of professional reason. Such as, who are the new investors that I can find for Groove? And what are they talking about?

Because it’s a more raw feed, I think you can understand the market in an interesting way. I use it as a sales tool, not for outreach, but for research tool to understand what the zeitgeist is in someone’s world. What someone’s tweeting is normally what they’re thinking about because they’re not putting a lot of effort into crafting it. Which means it’s a really good portal to figure out what’s interesting to a human.

I am addicted to TikTok. It’s so dangerous. They have a formula, and I can get lost in there forever. I have to delete it because I don’t know how to set boundaries. My boundary is don’t have it in my life whatsoever.

Two other boundaries I’ve set for myself: I don’t have any social media on my phone except LinkedIn, and I don’t use social media in bed.

At various points in being a founder and CEO, I’ve felt pressure to have an active social media presence. I don’t think I feel that way right now. I’m curious about how a brand’s employees, especially its founders, play a role in engaging potential users or customers, and are they more interesting than the brands themselves? People in roles in the company building more authentic relationships through social with audiences.

At various points in being a founder and CEO, I’ve felt pressure to have an active social media presence. I don’t think I feel that way right now.

I think if I had a big social following and I was seen as a thought leader and I invested in it as a brand, it would definitely deliver significant ROI, in fundraising, marketing and partnerships opportunities.

I’ve seen the people that have built big fanbases — for example, if you have a successful podcast, you can raise a hundred million dollar venture fund just because you have a popular podcast. You see that those kinds of media outlets are powerful. I just think that they also can be a real distraction to building a company at this stage.

Right now I’m focused on product, product, product. So therefore today, I don’t feel like building a big social following is important for me.