La Voz de Galicia – February 9, 2024 →
There is a cartoon by illustrator Ali Solomon for The New Yorker magazine in which one person with a phone in hand tells another that they feel like Instagram is suggesting their plans for the weekend. And the truth is that I have the cartoon in my head every day. Because, even though I try to be disciplined with social media (according to my phone, I spend an average of thirteen minutes a day on Instagram), every day I am more scared by the way it influences my thoughts. Both the mundane and the deepest ones.
Today I was clear about what I was going to cook for dinner, I had already done the shopping and everything, and then Instagram shows me one of those super easy recipes from an account I don’t follow, which all of a sudden makes me want to have oven-baked artichokes with a garlic, tomato, and ginger cream for dinner. And there I go, like an idiot, to buy artichokes at the supermarket and to try to reproduce a recipe as simple as it is impossible, because my artichokes are neither as tender as those in the video, nor does my cream taste as good as it looks. And so, while swallowing my pride while trying to find some flavor in my dry artichokes, I started to think about the power that the social network had in changing my decision about dinner. And I started to wonder what other ways it has to change my criteria, especially on issues related to what is happening in the world. And I got scared again, because I am aware that the content I receive from profiles I don’t follow is precisely designed to influence our thoughts on all possible topics, but we are not always aware of the power they have to make us change our minds, for better or for worse…
