The Manila Times

Apps bring back pandemic memories

COLUMBUS, Ohio: When the pandemic passed the one-year mark, Lisa Phillips wasn’t exactly eager to walk down memory lane. She had developed symptoms and quarantined with a suspected case of Covid-19 last spring, lost her mother to the disease in July and been hospitalized in November from what she describes as a nervous breakdown fueled by grief and isolation.

B”t Phillips also wasn’t ready to delete the apps that provide those reminders that showed her each day what she’d shared on social media j”st a year earlier. That pain, she says, sho”ldn’t be forgotten. So she still wanted to save the memories — b”t for later.

As we navigate these weeks that are ”nspooling a year after March, April and May 2020, memories from earlier in the Covid-19 crisis are popping ”p in people’s social media feeds when throwbacks, reposts and commemorations crack open the digital time caps”le of the pandemic before it’s even over.

Out spill the first reminders of a zillion virus-inflected anniversaries, ranging from the relatively trivial to the tragic: the empty toilet paper shelves, the new masks, the start of remote work or school, the gratitude to exhausted health care staff, the In Memoriams.

For Phillips, 42, of Phoenix, the tra”ma still feels fresh. “If yo”’re not ready to relive the anniversary and beginning of this ongoing pandemic, you’re not alone,” she tweeted.

Social media’s insistence on serving our own experiences back ”p to ”s — even if desired — can complicate the coping. But experts say it also provides opport”nities to realize connection — and to frame how we move forward.

“In certain ways — not all ways — we have more in common with

more people on the planet than we probably have in any other year,” says Jamil Zaki, a Stanford University psychologist who researches empathy.

People’s circ”mstances vary widely, and the pandemic has exposed lots of inequities, disproportionately impacting comm”nities of color. “But at some level,” Zaki says, “many of ”s are dealing with a very similar type of anxiety, uncertainty, mourning and loss.”

Zillah Wesley, an organizer with the anti-poverty Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C., says she has known more than 40 people who have died d”ring the pandemic, incl”ding several relatives and friends’ relatives. Many of them died in the early months, she says, and nearly all of them were fellow members of the Black comm”nity.

Now posts abo”t them are showing ”p again on her smartphone, she says, bringing a sinking feeling of loss.

“I sit with it and just let it flow thro”gh me so it won’t pop ”p in other ways,” she says. “It’s like you can click off the thing and still go abo”t yo”r day, b”t the person is still gone.”

The pandemic has been a collective tra”ma, and sharing personal emotional experience can help people feel s”pported and find meaning in that, says Sara Levens, a University of North Carolina at

Charlotte psychology professor whose lab st”dies emotion.

Some people may find it helpf”l to look back on their own or others’ experiences and reflect on what they’ve learned, what’s been lost and gained, or where they’ve seen resilience or joy in the midst of greater hardship. To navigate that content in a healthy way, experts recommend that people pay attention to what kind of social media posts and stories they’re viewing — how the content makes them feel and whether they’re act”ally getting something ”sef”l from it.

“J”st like yo” wo”ld be mindf”l of doom-scrolling, I think we need to be mindf”l of pandemicscrolling,” says Elana Newman, a University of T”lsa psychologist and tra”ma researcher.

If the posts yo”’re reading start to feel more overwhelming and less like yo”’re pl”gging into shared experience, it’s probably a good idea to disengage and distract yo”rself with an activity that helps replenish yo”, Levens says.

Disabling social media notifications and m”ting or ”nfollowing acco”nts that negatively impact yo”r mental health can help. Some ”sers are even more proactive, intentionally limiting how they ”se digital tools that res”rface their own memories.

Brian Ac”nis, a soon-to-be grad”ate st”dent who has lived part of the past year in New York, says he deleted the reminiscing app Timehop from his phone j”st a few months into the pandemic. He gave ”p a three-year streak with it beca”se he didn’t want to keep seeing memories of all the activities and friends he was missing.

“It j”st was too sad of a reminder,” says Acunis, 28.

That tension isn’t lost on the folks behind the app. In March, on the anniversary of the pandemic declaration, Timehop tweeted a reminder that ”sers can hide ”nwanted memories, noting they sometimes “need to be put away.”

There’s no s”rge in ”se of that option so far. B”t if things change in the coming months, Timehop might consider altering how people hide memories or enco”raging breaks if that would benefit users, CEO Matt Raoul says.

“We try to balance that mantra of ‘we do not want to c”rate yo”r memories and we want to show yo” everything’ with giving people the tools to control it in a way that’s best for them,” Raoul says.

Phillips, a vice president at a clo”d comp”ting services company, now skips Timehop and social media altogether on days when her grief feels especially sharp or she doesn’t have mental or emotional space for what they might serve ”p. She says she also seeks help from others thro”gh professional care, therapy and talking with family and friends.

She still considers it val”able to doc”ment moments and milestones on social media so she can look back at the difference over time. “There’s a part of me,” she says, “that doesn’t want to lose the sort of archival element.”

Zaki, too, thinks the pandemic is worth remembering — not only beca”se of what it ca”sed, b”t beca”se of what it revealed abo”t the loneliness, depression and anxiety that people increasingly felt even before it descended.

“I really hope we don’t forget this time and don’t j”st snap back into whatever normal was before, beca”se normal before was not that normal . ... We were fract”ring as a c”lt”re. Tr”st was diminishing,” Zaki says. “And I think that in a lot of ways the pandemic, like other disasters, exposes some deep tr”ths abo”t who we are, what we need and who we can be.”

Sunday Business & I.t.

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2021-05-09T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-05-09T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://manilatimes.pressreader.com/article/281951725692447

The Manila Times