What I Like About You: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Halle Levitt has been online friends with Nash for years. She was there at the beginning of his now-viral webcomic. He was one of the the first fans of One True Pastry–a YA book blog where Halle is known for her reviews and custom cupcakes baked and decorated to match her favorite book covers.

Even though they’ve never met in real life, they talk about almost everything. There’s one thing Nash doesn’t know: Halle’s real name.

Online Halle goes by Kels–a name to match her cool influencer persona where she’s funny, collected, and she never says or does the wrong thing. At first Halle used Kels to distinguish her own publishing in-roads as an aspiring publicist from her connection to her publishing royalty grandmother. Now it feels safer to be Kels because Kels always has it together while Halle knows she decidedly does not.

Being two people is confusing enough but when Halle and her brother move in with their grandfather the lines between Halle’s real life and her online life begin to blur once she realizes Nash is one of her new classmates.

Nash is even better in real life. But it’s still so much easier to keep her online identity a secret. The only problem is that as Halle and Nash grow closer she realizes that Nash’s affections are divided because even if he’s getting closer to Halle he’s still nursing a major crush … on Kels in What I Like About You (2020) by Marisa Kanter.

Find it on Bookshop.

What I Like About You is Kanter’s debut novel. Halle and her family are Jewish. Nash is Jewish and half Korean.

Halle’s narration is interspersed with ephemera between chapters including excerpts from social media posts, text threads between Halle and Nash or Halle and other friends, and emails. The tension between Halle’s double life is lent more urgency by the looming deadline of BookCon where Halle might appear as a panelist thus revealing her real identity not only to all of her fans and followers but also to Nash and the other online friends she has unaware of her double life.

Kanter’s prose is filled with snappy dialog and thoughtful explorations of family dynamics as Halle and her brother adjust to living with their grandfather and all three of them grieve the death of Halle’s grandmother the year before. The story is focused not just on the teen characters but the world of teen content creators–an influential niche in social media but one that isn’t always reflected authentically (or at all) in pop culture.

Although certain elements of the book might date the story–particularly the finale set at the no-longer-extant BookCon and social media that’s always changing–What I Like About You is a universal story; come for the mistaken identity love triangle, stay for the bookish shenanigans and feel-good humor.

Possible Pairings: Perfectly Parvin by Olivia Abtahi, Bookishly Ever After by Isabel Bandeira, Alex Approximately by Jenn Bennett, The Voting Booth by Brandy Colbert, Happy Messy Scary Love by Leah Konen, Tweet Cute by Emma Lord, Drizzle, Dreams, and Lovestruck Things by Maya Prasad, Last Chance Books by Kelsey Rodkey, By the Book by Amanda Sellet, Recommended For You by Laura Silverman, The Fill-In Boyfriend by Kasie West, Super Fake Love Song by David Yoon

Lawless Spaces: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

It is
too much and
I get a zap
of when we were in quarantine
and I missed both the life I had been living
and the future one that felt impossible
and the ones I’d never lived but should have. I had so
much time
for
missing

The Dovewick women have always had complicated relationships with their pasts. Maybe that’s why the tradition of the notebooks started. No one knows anymore. It’s expected, though.

As Mimi struggles to find a way to connect with her mother–always withdrawn, always a little cold–she wonders if being a Dovewick daughter is another name for being a disappointment. No wonder she prefers to be @MimiDove. She can curate who she is online. She can show people the best pieces. The ones that don’t make anyone ask her why she’s so short, why she wore that top; online Mimi can share the pieces that won’t ever show how she turned sixteen alone, how her mother’s boyfriend barely tolerates her presence.

Mimi has always known about the notebooks kept by every woman in her family. She’s seen them all lined up on the mantle. All the girls in all the pictures that bleed together as background noise.

Writing in her own notebook is daunting. But it’s also a place where, finally, Mimi can present an unvarnished version of herself. One that is allowed to be scared and hurt, one that is allowed to miss all of the things she never really had.

Mimi doesn’t like to think about the past. She doesn’t like to think about what happened before or what her mother said after. She tries to ignore the sexual assault case that’s all over the news, tries to make it more background noise. Until her mother comes forward as an accuser.

Suddenly, Mimi feels like she doesn’t recognize her mother or her own life. As she digs through the old notebooks she finds her mother’s story, her grandmother’s, her great-grandmother’s. So many Dovewick women. All navigating the same confusing space between girl and woman, absorbing the same hurts as daughters, hoping they’ll learn how to be better mothers.

Looking to the past gives Mimi strength to understand a lot of truths about her own life and her relationship with her mother. But before she can look ahead, she’ll have to decide who she wants to be and how she wants to navigate this confusing world in Lawless Spaces (2022) by Corey Ann Haydu.

Find it on Bookshop.

Lawless Spaces is a standalone novel in verse. The primary story follows Mimi in 2022. Readers also encounter Mimi’s ancestors as Mimi unearths stories from Betty (1954) and Tiffany (1999), among others. Mimi and her family are white. Despite tackling so many voices and time periods, each girl’s voice remains as distinct as her story–even as common themes like loneliness begin to come through.

Through Mimi and her family, Haydu’s sophisticated verse addresses the damaging legacy of the male gaze while looking through a smaller lens focused on the fractured relationship between a daughter and her mother. It’s a story about what happens when you realize you have to save yourself because the grownups who were supposed to keep you safe can’t even protect themselves.

Lawless Spaces is a timely, forward-facing story that tackles the isolation and loss of the pandemic while also telling an entirely different story about what it means to carry generational trauma. Powerful, ultimately healing, and very highly recommended.

Possible Pairings: Vinyl Moon by Mahogany L. Browne, One Great Lie by Deb Caletti, Unbecoming by Jenny Downham, You Too?: 25 Voices Share Their #MeToo Stories by Janet Gurtler, An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi, Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough, You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins, 13 Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby, A Room Away From the Wolves by Nova Ren Suma, Seton Girls by Charlene Thomas, In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner

*An advance copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review consideration*

You can also check out my interview with Corey about this book.

Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Sunny Song has big plans for the summer before her senior year in high school. She’s ready to maximize time with her best friend Maya and maybe finally get out of the friend zone with her forever crush Rafael Kim. Sunny also has big plans for her social media platform with new ideas and content that will get her to 100k followers.

Summer has barely started when all of Sunny’s plans go out the window. First, she’s called into the principal’s office on the last of school because of concerns about the amount she posts during the day (it’s called pre-scheduling) and the lack of anonymity when she mentions other students (is it really her fault that a vanity plate like “on fiyah” is so unique?).

Arguing with her parents about her social media platforms is nothing new. But even Sunny is surprised when her latest live cooking video accidentally turns PG-13 and goes viral as #BrownieGate and, worse, #BrowniePorn. Which is the last straw for her parents who immediately derail Sunny’s summer with a one month digital detox at the Sunshine Heritage Farms camp in Iowa.

Coming from California, Sunny is unprepared for the humidity, the farm animals, the absence of fast food, and the utter lack of WiFi or access to her devices. If Sunny wants to keep up the #BrownieGate momentum, she knows she has to find a way back online this summer even as she tries to disconnect. As Sunny discover new friendships, a boy named Theo who is as annoyingly fond of farm puns as he is cute, and some other new connections, she’ll learn that sometimes you have to go offline to really grow in Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous (2021) by Suzanne Park.

Find it on Bookshop.

Park’s latest YA contemporary is a laugh-out-loud funny story grounded in real tips and tricks for digital detox from experts like Cal Newport and Catherine Price. Although the Sunny’s camp experience pulls advice from real resources, Sunny doesn’t get the benefit of those texts adding to the humor and drama as she works through the process with help from camp counselors.

Sunny is Korean-American. Maya, her best friend in California, and Sunny’s new camp friend Delina are both Black. While the focus of the story is squarely on Sunny’s digital detox and ensuing shenanigans, Park also includes some smart moments throughout the story as Sunny deals with micro-aggressions at camp and a conversation with Delina (who grew up in Korea and filmed mukbang videos where she would eat local cuisine) highlights the kinds of harassment some content creators, especially people of color, can experience.

Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous is a book about social media and content creation that actually understands both while still focusing on timeless themes as Sunny tries to figure out who she wants to be (aside from a famous content creator). Park presents a realistically handled detox journey for Sunny throughout the story. At the same time, she also points out the excitement and connection that can be found through technology offering a refreshingly nuanced perspective. Come for the humor, the friendship, and the romance. Stay for the commentary on social media.

Flawless pacing combined with Sunny’s brutally honest and witty narration make Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous a must read. Highly recommended.

You can also check out my interview with Suzanne here on the blog.

Possible Pairings: Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear, The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo, You Have a Match by Emma Lord, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown, Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport, How To Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life by Catherine Price, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say by Leila Sales, Follow Your Arrow by Jess Verdi, Sunkissed by Kasie West, The Social Dilemma (Netflix documentary)

*An advance copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review consideration*

Follow Your Arrow: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

CeCe Ross and her girlfriend Silvie Castillo Ramírez are social media influencers. They have the cute outfits, the followers, and the endorsement deals to prove it. Plus, the girls are total relationship goals–hashtag Cevie forever. Until Cevie is over and CeCe is left mourning what she had thought was a perfect relationship while also figuring out how to handle the public nature of the breakup with her and Silvie’s followers.

CeCe is always worried about her online engagement and obsesses over every post. She wonders if anyone would follow her to hear about the issues she cares about instead of the new hand cream she’s been sent to try. She wonders if her followers  will like her without Silvie.

Enter Josh the new guy in town who is smart, musical, has great taste in donuts, and no clue about social media. CeCe has always known she’s bisexual so falling for Josh isn’t a surprise, but as her feelings for Josh grow she wonders if she has to tell Josh about her internet fame.

When CeCe’s efforts to keep her public persona a secret go spectacularly wrong CeCe will have to answer uncomfortable questions from Josh and confront the media attention centered around who she chooses to date and the version of herself she chooses to share in Follow Your Arrow (2021) by Jessica Verdi.

Find it on Bookshop.

At the start of Follow Your Arrow CeCe is struggling as she deals with the breakup and tries to ignore her increasing anxiety when it comes to maintaining her online presence and giving her followers the content they want and expect. Readers see some of this content in social media posts that appear between chapters. After years of defining herself in relation to Silvie and curating her public persona, CeCe isn’t sure who she is when she’s no longer part of a couple–especially one as visible as Cevie.

Verdi doesn’t shy away from showing the work that goes into curating an online presence as an influencer. It’s a hustle and it can be exhausting–which CeCe knows all too well. But it can also lead to some lasting and genuine friendships like CeCe’s long-distance best friend in Australia.

While bisexuality is much more mainstream now it is still often sidelined or erased in the larger LGBTQ+ community where bisexuals can be accused of “passing” in heterosexual presenting relationships. Follow Your Arrow tackles that head on as CeCe is forced to publicly justify both her relationship choices and her social media persona.

Follow Your Arrow is a fast-paced story filled with humor and compassion. Come for the behind-the-scenes look at life as an influencer and the sweet romance, stay for the thoughtful commentary on both bisexual erasure and the separate spheres of public and private life.

Possible Pairings: Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo, Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender, Verona Comics by Jennifer Dugan, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar, You Have a Match by Emma Lord, Don’t Hate the Player by Alexis Nedd, Radio Silence by Alice Oseman, Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous by Suzanne Park, Odd One Out by Nic Stone, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

Exclusive Bonus Content: Please also take a minute to appreciate this cover which does such a great job of capturing CeCe and also has nods to the colors of the bisexual flag. So well done!

Tweet Cute: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Pepper has spent her high school career maintaining a perfect GPA while captaining the swim team and adjusting to life in New York after her family’s burger stand Big League Burger became a major national chain. Not to mention secretly running Big League Burger’s Twitter account for the company’s meme-illiterate social media manager.

The only place where Pepper can admit how little she knows about what she wants next is when she’s talking to Wolf on Weazle–the anonymous chat app that is completely against school rules and impossible to ignore.

Unlike Pepper, Jack doesn’t worry about overachieving at all–his identical twin Ethan has that covered. Especially when Jack is always ready behind the scenes to take over the things Ethan can’t quite manage. Being the lower profile brother has its perks as it gives Jack time to teach himself to create and manage Weazle.

Talking to Sparrow anonymously on his app is the one place where no one is disappointed that Jack isn’t Ethan. It’s also a distraction from working at his family’s shop Girl Cheesing and worrying about the pressure he feels to one day take over the family business.

When Big League Burger steals the recipe for Girl Cheesing’s iconic grilled cheese sandwich, Jack is ready to throw down one Tweet at a time. And Pepper, it turns out, can give as good as she gets when it comes to snark.

All’s fair in love and fast food, but when Pepper and Jack’s Twitter battle escalates to viral proportions they will have to figure out if either of them can transcend their family’s expectations–not to mention their epic rivalry–to give their fledgling friendship a chance to become something more in Tweet Cute (2020) by Emma Lord.

Find it on Bookshop.

Tweet Cute is Lord’s debut novel. The story alternates between Pepper and Jack’s first person narrations. If the premise sounds a little like You’ve Got Mail or The Shop Around the Corner, that’s not just you. The book stays close to the plot of those classics with a few modern twists (and a lot more grilled cheese).

Viral Twitter feud aside, Tweet Cute is a gentle contemporary romance about two characters trying to do the best they can even when they are actively getting in their own way partly due to their own preconceived notions and a lack of communication with friends and family.

Surprising plot twists, satisfying character arcs, and the inventive incorporation of rom-com tropes keep this story from ever feeling stale or predictable.

Tweet Cute is an unexpectedly delightful story of mistaken identity, social media feuds, baking, and fast food. All wrapped up in character arcs centered on forgiveness and learning to understand yourself while you’re still figuring out who that is. In other words: ALL OF MY FAVORITE THINGS. Highly recommended.

Possible Pairings: Alex, Approximately by Jenn Bennett; Suffer Love by Ashley Herring Blake; Happily Ever Afters by Elise Bryant; Harley in the Sky by Akemi Dawn Bowman; Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum; Verona Comics by Jennifer Dugan; Now That I’ve Found You by Kristina Forest; Comics Will Break Your Heart by Faith Erin Hicks; What I Like About You by Marisa Kanter; Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon; Analee in Real Life by Janelle Milanes; Lucky Caller by Emma Mills; It All Comes Back to You by Farah Naz Rishi; Last Chance Books by Kelsey Rodkey; Tonight the Streets Are Ours by Leila Sales; Recommended for You by Laura Silverman; Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon; Six Impossible Things by Fiona Wood; The Shop Around the Corner; You’ve Got Mail

Analee in Real Life: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

Analee Echevarria knows she doesn’t come across that great in real life. Her mom died three years ago and it feels like it’s never going to stop hurting. Her father is marrying a yogi who drives Analee crazy–don’t even get her started on her soon-to-be stepsister. Then there’s Analee’s best friend who isn’t her best friend, or really any friend at all, anymore.

All in all, Analee is much happier spending her time playing her favorite online game where she can be Kiri–the night elf hunter who never struggles to say or do the right thing. It doesn’t hurt that her in-game sidekick Xolxar (played by a boy named Harris) has quickly become her best friend even though Analee and Harris have never met in person.

High school is just something to get through, and Analee knows she can do that if she just keeps her head down and stays out of the way of the popular kids. The only problem is that Seb Matias–undisputed school heartthrob and jerk–wants Analee to pose as his girlfriend while he tries to make is ex jealous.

Much to his surprise, and Analee’s, she agrees hoping the fake relationship can help her practice real connections and work up the nerve to finally meet Harris. But as their fake relationship threatens to turn into a real friendship, Analee has to wonder if she’s ready to connect with anyone in the real world–especially herself in Analee in Real Life (2018) by Janelle Milanes.

Find it on Bookshop.

Analee in Real Life is equal parts thoughtful and funny as Analee navigates grief, friend breakups, and her future step-mother’s nightmare diet schemes (kale chips, anyone?).

Analee is a no-nonsense narrator. She knows she has work to do and she knows she is one hundred percent terrified of putting in that work when it means doing scary things. As much as this novel explores romance and friendship, it’s really a story about Analee learning how to start to like herself and understand her place in a family that has irrevocably changed.

Analee in Real Life is an empowering and sometimes painfully realistic story about a girl who realizes that the most challenging role she has to play is herself. Recommended for readers who like their characters sharp, their humor sardonic, and their romances to toe the line between reality and hoax.

Possible Pairings: Alex, Approximately by Jenn Bennett; Emergency Contact by Mary H. K. Choi, 500 Words or Less by Juleah del Rosario; To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han; Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart; Tweet Cute by Emma Lord; In Real Life by Jessica Love; From Twinkle, With Love by Sandhya Menon; Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills; Don’t Hate the Player by Alexis Nedd; It All Comes Back to You by Farah Naz Rishi; Bright Before Sunrise by Tiffany Schmidt

Bad Girls With Perfect Faces: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

“I didn’t know then what I know now: Be careful when your feelings are too strong, when you love someone too much. A heart too full is like a bomb. One day it will explode.”

Sasha always looks out for her best friend Xavier. She’s the one who helped him put the pieces back together after his girlfriend Ivy cheated. She’s the one who dyes his hair. She’s the one who watches documentaries about the ocean and sea life with him.

Sasha is the one who would be perfect for Xavier. She loves him and she would never hurt him the way Ivy did. She’d never lie to him. And she’s just about ready to tell him all of that when Ivy shows up again.

Xavier and Ivy are a toxic combination–something that Xavier fails to remember when they get back together. All Sasha wants to do is protect him and prove once and for all that Ivy is a liar and a cheat.

So she poses as a guy online to attract Ivy.

What starts as a simple scheme to prove Ivy will cheat on Xavier again escalates quickly until the lies and the secrets start to spiral out of control. As Sasha’s plan to pretend to be someone else starts to go terribly wrong, she begins to worry about who she’s becoming in Bad Girls With Perfect Faces (2017) by Lynn Weingarten.

Bad Girls With Perfect Faces is a fascinating thriller that imagines what might happen when a seemingly minor case of catfishing goes horribly wrong. The novel is written in alternating chapters with the majority of the story falling to Sasha’s world-weary narration as she relates the events that blew her world apart. Text messages and other conversations between Sasha’s fake profile guy and Ivy are also interspersed throughout.

I can’t tell you much more about this story without giving something important away except that this is a perfect read-a-like for fans of Gone Girl. Bad Girls With Perfect Faces is a tense, sexy, thriller that promises to take readers on a wild ride from its ominous start to a twisted finish.

Possible Pairings: Like Never and Always by Ann Aguirre, Emergency Contact by Mary H. K. Choi, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier, Fragments of the Lost by Megan Miranda, This is Not a Love Letter by Kim Purcell

*An advance copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review consideration at BookExpo 2017*

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say: A Review

“It takes such a brief time to destroy someone’s life and forget that you ever did it. But rebuilding a life—that’s different. That takes forever.”

What happens when the worst thing you ever said is the only thing people know about you?

Winter Halperin has always been good with words—something that served her well as a National Spelling Bee champion a few years ago.

Now, after thoughtlessly sharing one insensitive comment online, words (and the entirety of the internet) have turned against Winter.She is stripped of her Spelling Bee title, condemned by strangers, and loses her college acceptance.

Winter always thought she was a good person. She still does. But mounting evidence online suggests otherwise. So does the mounting panic Winter feels every time she looks herself up online. Because how can she stop looking when some new horror could be added at any moment?

As she grapples with the aftermath of The Incident Winter is forced to confront hard truths about her own bigotry and its role in what happened as well as the nature of public shaming in the internet age in If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say (2018) by Leila Sales.

Find it on Bookshop.

Sales’ latest standalone novel is a timely, sometimes brutal contemporary novel. Winter is a white girl from a fairly well off family. Her comment–meant, she claims, as a fact-based joke on historical Bee winners–suggests that the latest winner of the National Spelling Bee (a twelve-year-old African American girl) can’t spell and is a surprising winner.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say starts with Winter posting that comment before bed and waking up to a nightmare of notifications, hateful messages, and other bad publicity as awareness of her comment grows and grows.

Although the novel is written in the first person Sales is careful to neither condone nor condemn Winter’s actions throughout. It’s up to readers to decide what punishment (or forgiveness) Winter may or may not deserve. When Winter develops crippling anxiety and panic attacks surrounding her online presence and what people are saying about her she enters a program to try and make amends for her actions and also to cope with the very public and very painful online shaming.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say is very plot driven without being high action. The focus of the story is squarely on what Winter did and the aftermath. The contrast between Winter confronting her own internalized bigotry/racism while also being subjected to such intense online shaming is incredibly powerful and thought provoking.

Winter is not always a likable character. It’s easy to feel bad for her as she faces death threats, of course. But it’s also hard to understand her thoughtlessness or how she is more focused on how many likes her joke might receive than on how hurtful it could be. In other words, Winter is a lot like many people who are active on social media.

Winter’s character arc balances dealing with the fallout both internally as she confronts her own biases/bigotry that she hasn’t grappled with before with the very public shaming. Does Winter learn anything from The Incident? Maybe, probably. Is it enough? Readers will have to judge that on their own.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say is a timely novel that will start a lot of hard but necessary conversations.

Possible Pairings: Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed, Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World by Ana Homayoun, Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous by Suzanne Park, All American Boys by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson, American Street by Ibi Zoboi

Social Media Wellness: A Non-Fiction Review and My Own Social Media Overhaul

Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World (2017) by Ana Homayoun is part textbook and part workbook offering background on the ways social media usage has changed and grown in recent years along with strategies for tweens and teens to manage their social media time along with all of their other school and extracurricular responsibilities.

Although this book (Homayoun’s third on teens and organization) is targeted at parents/educators it also offers useful information and strategies for teens to implement on their own. As a librarian and social media user myself I learned a lot both for working with kids and teens and for my own practices.

The first three chapters of the book introduce social media as an ever-changing phenomenon and some of the bigger players in social media sites for young people. Homayoun also looks at how social media use affects teens and tweens and offers some compelling statistics and facts on how social media is changing sleep patterns, empathy, and other habits for frequent users. Homayoun also offers a quick rundown of how the instant gratification and constant usage of social media can feed into teen development and promote negative traits and offer a warped sense of what is and is not acceptable.

The second half of the book offers organization strategies and successful anecdotes framed within Homayoun’s three-pronged strategy of socialization, self-regulation, and  safety designed to help tweens and teens not just use social media and devices less but also to use both more efficiently.

My main takeaway from this book is that choices matter and when it comes to digital use there is always a choice. It’s also important to remember that friends are not the same as followers/likes even if you might have some great friends that you only know digitally.

In my own life I was inspired after reading Social Media Wellness to take a hard look at what was and wasn’t working for me. I deleted accounts I no longer use, I left sites that brought me no joy (Pinterest), and I made sure I knew all of my accounts and their related information (and if any needed to be made more secure). I also took time to think about privacy settings and what I want to be available to my friends/followers (I will not be keeping an archive of my instagram stories for instance).

Something else that really clicked with me was the idea that social media encourages an “always on” mentality and what that means for anyone using them. It’s exhausting! After reading about this repeatedly in Homayoun’s book and realizing how much I was plugged in I decided it was time to remove my work email/messaging from my phone. I don’t have a job with urgent deadlines and I don’t have to take work home. There’s no reason for me to be plugged in all the time and replying all the time when it will keep until business hours. While I still start my personal and work days checking sites and emails, I try to avoid ending the day in that way and instead try to unplug and either watch TV with my mom or just read before bed instead.

Homayoun also suggests readers try the Pomodoro Technique for monotasking (because multi-tasking never works, especially when it includes checking texts or likes) which has been incredibly helpful for parceling out my own day-to-day tasks and using apps like Moment to monitor phone usage (I tried this right when my compute died which totally skewed the data and I need to try it again now) and also Forest to encourage less phone use. (I’ve also been using Forest as my timer for the Pomodoro modules.)

What I really like about Social Media Wellness is that it offers factual information to back up claims along with a variety of strategies which allow readers to take what works for them and leave the rest. A lot of this is common sense–especially for readers who are already “plugged in” when it comes to social media and digital devices–but the calm and measured approach makes even the simplest changes feel empowering and proves that even small changes can make a huge difference. A must-read in this increasingly digital age.