One of a series of leaflets published by The Compassionate Friends Social media “After seeing some distressing and wildly inaccurate comments on social media, I decided to have a complete break for a while. It brought a sense of relief.” Social media can be a wonderful tool for communication amongst friends or family, but it can also be a source of deep pain. It is now a world of its own, where even the most private pain can become a topic of public discussion and speculation. There is very little control over what is posted, and rumours can multiple rapidly. To protect our social media feeds, we may want to set the settings on our social media accounts to “private”. This means our posts and pages will only be visible to friends. Nobody, including media outlets, will be able to access our pictures. If we have access to the administration settings on our child’s social media accounts, we may want to do this for their accounts as well. It can be a good idea to do this as soon as possible. We can make further decisions, later on, on whether to close their accounts. (See the TCF leaflet Our child’s digital legacy.) Some of us find that we need to take a temporary break from social media if aspects of our child’s death or life become a topic of discussion by strangers. While even well-meaning comments could distress us or cause tension, nasty comments, innuendo and outright lies are deeply disturbing. Responding and engaging in a conversation with the authors of such posts rarely brings any resolution. Sometimes the best answer is to step away, at least for a time. • Additional measures may be needed if unkindness crosses over into online bullying, hate and abuse. For advice and suggestions for dealing with harmful content, see: reportharmfulcontent.com • Online abuse may be a criminal offence if it relates to sexual orientation, religion or race. Spreading false information, harassment and hate speech can be crimes. There is more information at this link: report-it.org.uk (Search for “internet hate crime”) Taking action about offensive social media posts may be too much to think about when we are in the midst of coping with our grief, but a trusted friend may be able to help on our behalf.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTM0NTEz