The Energy Fields of Social Media

How do you feel when you go on social media? It might be a good practice to slow the process down and ask yourself the following questions, and watch what is actually happening inside of you and your energy field:

1. How do I feel just before I go on a social media platform and what causes me to go on?
2. How do I feel and what happens once I am on the platform?
3. How do I feel and what happens once I go off of the platform and for some time thereafter?
4. How long before I feel an urge to go on again, and is the pattern of feeling and experience generally the same?

In Ernest Holmes’ book The Science of Mind, he describes “The Atmosphere of Places” saying:

“As all people have a mental atmosphere, so do all places; and as the atmosphere of people is the result of their thoughts, so the atmosphere of places is the result of the thoughts that have been created in them. Places are permeated with the thoughts of the people who inhabit them; in this way, mental atmospheres are created and may be easily felt by those contacting them.”

And:

“Even the slightest things seem to be possessed of a soul, or subjective atmosphere. How often we see a familiar coat or hat hanging on a peg, while in it we seem to see the person who wears it; it seems to look like him, and so it does, for it retains the emanation of his atmosphere, and really is permeated with his personality. Everything has an atmosphere which we sense and to which we react accordingly; if it is pleasant we like it, and if unpleasant we dislike it.”

Published in 1926, the internet had not been realized yet and so he references “places” and “things” as wholly physical entities in the three dimensional world, however, Facebook, as an example, certainly qualifies as a place or thing. Hopefully, the reality and power of the atmosphere, or energy field, or aura, of each and every thing does not need to be declared with much convincing here (perhaps I will write more about it another time), but quickly, here are a few examples which of at least one I am sure you have experienced:

1. The classic example of walking into a room full of people and knowing that something is “off,” or, if you are inclined to give all evidence of that knowing as a reaction to persons’ micro expressions and posture, then think of a time when you entered a place devoid of people that felt “creepy” and unpleasant, or joyful and vibrant, but you couldn’t place exactly why.
2. You met or encountered a person (in person or via the internet, phone, etc.) and you instantly liked them, or instantly disliked them, without an immediate clear reason.
3. You have several people in your life, and when you spend time with one person, you often generally leave feeling a certain way, and when you spend time with a different person, you often generally leave feeling a certain way that is different than how you often feel with the first individual. Perhaps you want to connect this with the words and experiences you share while together. If you find yourself wanting to do that, imagine just sitting with this person for an hour or so and not talking or doing anything together, and imagine how that would feel, just being in their presence. Likely, you will be able to sense how each person, just being in proximity to them, “feels” different.

If you accept that each place, being, and thing has an energetic atmosphere, and then you reflect on how interacting with a certain social media platform makes you feel, then you have begun to analyze the very real impact of your energetic aura of interacting with the energetic aura of, say, Instagram. Of course, in acknowledging that each thing (I will say “thing” encompassing being, object, place, etc.) has its own specific energy, and then a collection of things has its own energy, and so on, then it follows that your experience can be different depending on what you interact with during each visit to a social media platform. However, you are always interacting with some aspect(s) of the whole.

For example, I recently enabled an extension on my internet browser that blocks the stories, newsfeed, and ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on, and replaces it with an inspirational quote. I absolutely love this! So, if I need to, I am able to log on to a social media platform and somewhat bypass getting pulled into different energy streams. However, I have been logging on to use the Facebook Marketplace and am definitely feeling the effects of interacting with those energy fields (or streams, as I sometimes call them depending on what type of energy situation it is, which I’ll cover in another post). Also, even before I get to the marketplace or check my marketplace messages, I can feel how just logging into Facebook has an impact on me. However, this is a wonderful tool to help cut down the noise.

(To add, this extension can block almost everything on YouTube, allowing me to only see a search bar to get specifically to my yoga class (as an example) vs. seeing all sorts of suggestions, ads, and other potential rabbit holes. And this extension offers you a pause before heading to these types of sites.)

Of course, studies have been done showing the addictive nature of social media as well as its toll on self-esteem and so on, so there’s no doubt that it impacts people, but without turning to others’ study results, you can notice for yourself this “field” of energy that you enter when you go on those sites by the practice above and also by taking a complete break from all social media (and other similar platforms, such as YouTube), and see what begins to happen to your feelings, focus, time expenditure, and other things that arise from that new space that is not filled with that energy and the fact that your energy is no longer intermingling with the platform.

It may not be pleasant, because you may find that you were using checking social media as something to rely on or fill space with, or any number of patterns. However, this is a way to see what impact it has been having on you, and if you stick with it long enough to move through some of the initial discomfort, there is a window that will appear where you likely will be able to see what your energy has the potential for without it (and, trust me, there is much potential).