My relationship with social media continues to evolve. I reached a breaking point as their business model shifted to rewarding people for engaging more, attempting to capture undivided attention and growing time on the screen.
As a result, I am not spending much time on social media platforms. I understand they are powerful tools to organize people and generate momentum. It’s how I use them myself to distribute my blog posts, podcasts and events. However, I am limiting my engagement. I may circle back around from time to time to see the comments and perhaps offer a response, but it was draining the life out of me and taking me away from my actual work. So, I’m spending much less time on Facebook.
I’m often tagged in Facebook posts, groups or pages. I don’t discourage this but please note that it’s increasingly unlikely that I will respond with any detail. Advocacy is an important part of my work and it’s necessary for my team to be able to collect correspondence in one place. This is difficult, nearly impossible in fact, on social media platforms.
My team is working on dozens of issues from Saanich North and the Islands at any given time. We are committed to finding answers and solutions to the issues, challenges and opportunities in our riding and we want to be able to organize our advocacy with government or other stakeholders. Finally, when we get a response, we need to be able to easily share that information with you.
Your voice is critical in my work.
When our constituency speaks, I take your voices and your message to government. In fact, it’s one of the most powerful tools I have as your representative. With this in mind, it is critical that, in addition to the work you do on social media platforms to gather like-minded people, you also need to share your advocacy directly with me and my team. You can reach us by mail, email, phone or in person. By sharing your thoughts, opinions, concerns, ideas, and support about or for an issue directly with us, we can ensure the most effective and efficient communications from our office.
I appreciate your understanding. It is an incredible honour to represent communities that are so engaged in our democratic process and I look forward to continuing to powerfully advocate for our home.
Email: Adam.Olsen.MLA@leg.bc.ca
Phone: 250-655-5600
Address: #215-2506 Beacon Avenue, Sidney, BC V8L 4T9
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
I am struggling with the same thing my friend. The ability with algorithms thwarting all your efforts to stay engaged with those that matter in your life is harder every single day. Finding a way to use it to its fullest and healthiest potential is a harder road to navigate with each passing day.