Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge #393
The Screen Is Not the Whole World
She held the phone toward the camera.
Social Media Seriously Harms Your Mental Health.
She had read the words a hundred times.
Perhaps there was some truth in them.
Social media could be loud.
One cruel comment could somehow outweigh fifty kind ones.
People compared their ordinary Tuesday mornings with someone else’s carefully edited holiday.
Arguments erupted between strangers who would probably have smiled politely at each other if they had met in a café.
Rumours became facts simply because they were shared enough times.
And sometimes, scrolling through hundreds of people made you feel strangely alone.
But she couldn’t blame the little screen for everything.
Through that same screen, she had found people she would never have met otherwise.
Writers.
Artists.
People living thousands of kilometres apart who somehow became friends.
She had watched strangers comfort each other through grief.
She had seen people speak about things they had once been afraid to say aloud.
She had laughed until she cried.
Learned.
Created.
Shared.
Connected.
The phone wasn’t the problem.
Perhaps forgetting there was a world beyond it was.
She lowered the phone and looked around the room.
The pictures on the wall weren’t moving.
Nobody was counting likes.
No algorithm was deciding which one deserved her attention.
They were simply there.
Like real life.
Quietly waiting to be noticed.
She smiled and placed the phone face down on the table.
Not forever.
Just for a while.
Because social media can be a wonderful window into the world.
But sometimes—
you need to remember to step away from the window
and live in it.
#FFFC
New singel out on all streaming platforms.
https://ditto.fm/silenced-but-not-broken
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
If you want a reading, send me an email:
Leave a comment