Be Kind Magazine

12 December 2019

Hello, Happy New Year. I hope you all had a restful holiday and are ready for a great 2020. Have you made any resolutions? Perhaps you want to cut down your plastic waste, volunteer or improve your yoga practice? If you’re stuck for ideas we’ve got some positive and impactful suggestions on p44. Asking friends, family and colleagues their intentions for the New Year, a lot of resolutions are regarding social media. “I’m deleting Facebook,” said one friend, “I spend too much time on Instagram and want to cut back,” said another. To say that our relationships with the digital world are complicated would be an understatement. For me, it’s an essential part of my job – it connects me to our readers, it introduces me to new and exciting brands and charities doing brilliant things for people and the planet, it’s where I get up to date with the news and how we share the Be Kind message. Personally, I’ve never been a social media over-user, but I’ve absolutely wasted a few Sunday afternoons scrolling aimlessly and mindlessly through Instagram, then Twitter, then Facebook, before starting the same cycle again. So it’s this passive, quite pointless, use I want to cut out. I know that deleting social media entirely wouldn’t work for me, but spending more time offline is really appealing. We caught up with the ever-inspiring Venetia and Max La Manna on p40 to discuss their Offline 48 campaign – encouraging us to spend the weekend device-free. If the idea makes you nervous, we’ve got some recommendations of how to spend your time when you’re not using your phone on p42. Social media can be such a positive tool, but it’s important to be present and phone-free in the real world, too. Here’s to a year of less scrolling and more doing. Have a great month, Phillipa Editor