Personal, professional, political: the social media quagmire

I have always been, and remain, a reluctant Twitter user.* And lately Twitter is conspiring to make me even less of a fan. Along with other social media forums.

To the extent possible, I have attempted to keep my political, personal, and professional lives somewhat separate on social media. I've read blogs and Twitter satisfied my FOMO by linking me to the best thinkers and newest publications in education and technology. Facebook let me keep up with friends and relatives, providing as well an endless supply of wit, humor and mindless trivia. And well, those old fashioned things called newspaper and magazines, both online and in print, were my source of reasoned political opinion from both the left and the right.

While there has always been some overlap in social media, I felt I had been able to keep communication spheres somewhat distinct. But the lines over the past year or so have blurred.

Politics seems to have wedged its way into both my personal and professional communication arenas. While education has always had a political element (I was the state school library organization's legislative chair for many years), tweets and posts have become more about national politics in general. Friends and relatives now share more political diatribes, satire, and outrage than they do photos of entrees and grandchildren. Just how sad is that? And our mainstream media has become more overtly polarized as well.

Perhaps trying the spaces between personal, political, and professional spheres of communication have always been an illusion. And maybe I am the only person who needs the occasional respite from the loudly banging drums and blaring trumpets of political screed. Or maybe I am too far into geezerdom to "get" social media.

But thank you my friends and colleagues for keeping politics from your tweets and posts to the extent your conscience allows. 

* Discussion via bumper sticker, The 140 character discussion, Poster Power on Twitter, 10 useful Twitter alerts, I killed my Twitter account, etc.