Mattering and Social Media — And Why Community Is Key For Mattering

Includes 12 things you can do to help others to know they matter in your daily social circles and 12 actions of expressing mattering at work — Part 2 of 2 (For part 1 go here)

Source: CANVA Pro

Mattering and Social Media

Why mattering gets challenged by social media: I can’t write about mattering in the year 2022 without mentioning the connection between social media and mattering. A scalpel in the hand of a trained surgeon can save a life, but a knife in a killer’s hand can take one. Social media in the hands of someone who has a healthy sense of mattering can be used to share valuable information, events, resources, and products keep relationships alive and inspire and uplift others, especially during a long global event like the pandemic. Yet social media can also drag people down a rabbit hole of unhealthy group affiliation, destructive comparison, conspiracy theories, spread lies, people-pleasing patterns… if their sense of mattering is linked to the numbers of likes under a selfie on Facebook or a story on Instagram.

How do you use social media?
Do you use it to express what matters to you and who matters to you?
Do you show that you matter by ensuring healthy boundaries against trolls, ‘alternative’ facts, and time-wasting triggers?
Do you use it to support others and remind them how much they matter especially during a time of unrest, anxieties, and sadly growing divide?

Mattering and Personal Inner Work

Why conscious personal work on mattering matters during the global pandemic, even more, is driven by the fact that we have less social gatherings, fewer in-person meetings, less physical contact with people. Our relationships happen for a lot of people more virtually than in person which creates a lack of sensual experiences. And I don’t mean intimate ones rather the daily fact that we subconsciously smell each other, sense vibrations, energies, and feelings from others in the same room, and receive a lot of nuanced feedback about ourselves which we can’t get in Zoom group calls.

People who struggle with anxieties before the pandemic are doing so even more during the pandemic. Dealing with anxieties in isolation lacking physical nearness and sensual input can cause depression.

“This link between low mattering and psychological distress extends to links between not mattering and negative forms of psychosocial adjustment. …mattering was negatively correlated with both loneliness and social anxiety in 232 university students.”

Mattering and Community

Why community is a key to mattering is beautifully described by Gorden L. Flett and Masood Zangeneh in the Journal of Concurrent Disorders:

“We maintain that mattering matters at the best of times but it actually matters more during times of crisis such as the pandemic being experienced at present.” (page 108)

From health care workers and front line workers who don’t feel heard with their pleads to the public to get vaccinated over people in fragile situations or groups e.g. seniors, homeless people, teenagers at risk, and marginalized groups like Native Americans or LGBTQ … they all are at higher risk of not being heard and therefore feeling that they don’t matter. For all of us, the challenge is to deal with our own sense of control the pandemic has taken from us. Some anti-mask wearer might aggressively reject wearing a mask because rejection gives him/her a sense of power over something specific inside a world that seems to be gone out of control. No one wants to feel alone, unimportant, and out of control which circles our thoughts back to the relationship between mattering and our human needs. I deeply appreciate the article author’s paradigm shift declaring mattering as best seen as a resource!

“Mattering is a resource that promotes resilience and physiological adaptation to stress.” (page 140)

The beauty of communities is in my eyes that not only do they offer us circles of people who potentially validate us, they offer us also opportunities to show up as volunteers, activists, leaders, supporters! When we help others — especially strangers during crises like the pandemic or loss of houses due to fires in the west or hurricanes in the Midwest for example in the USA — we receive a deep sense of mattering for ourselves.

Mattering by making a positive impact on others is maybe the precious reward of any good-doing.

Mattering and Your Impact on Others Through Simple Actions

Ways you can help others to know they matter you can find easily by looking around to the people in your life asking yourself:

How can I express my appreciation to that person?

How can I validate that person?

What actions or words can convey the message: “You matter to me” or “You matter for the community”?

In what forms can I gift some of my precious resource — my attention — to that person?

Here are some examples of things I did in recent weeks. They are small acts of kindness, small expressions of appreciation, and short sharing of time and attention I gifted. I share them with the hope you find your own version and style. Plus you’re free to copy mine!

1. Calling a friend on the phone and inquiring how she/he is doing
2. Sending a funny postcard to someone you know lives alone
3. Bringing some flowers to a senior neighbor
4. Driving the children of a single parent to school
5. Making a loving shout-out about a friend’s recent career accomplishment on social media
6. Opening up and sharing a vulnerable story about one’s own life to show the other person that they are not alone with the struggle
7. Sharing and gifting food, books, money…
8. Buying chocolate pralines for nurses at the senior living home of my mother
9. Inviting a neighbor for tea on my porch listening to her/him venting and letting off some steam or frustration or grief
10. Texting a neighbor some online resource links for his/her job search
11. Inquiring at the supermarket how the cashier is doing while I’m packing my groceries
12. Surprising a stranger with a genuine compliment

Mattering expressions at work

Ways to make people on the job feel they matter. These 12 actions are proven to create a positive environment where people enjoy coming to work, feel loyalty towards their team and employers, and show higher levels of engagement and productivity.

1. Give positive productive feedback that explains precisely what someone did well and how that contribution made a difference
2. Explain to team members how their seemingly small niched area of tasks and responsibilities fit into the bigger scheme of work and why what they do is important
3. Smile more often with real eye contact
4. No birthdays of your team members and celebrate those with cards signed by everyone
5. Where and with whom appropriate have culturally accepted body contact like shaking hands, high-fives, a tab on the shoulder, upper or lower arm
6. Ask team members for their input, ideas, opinions, suggestions…
7. Listen well and deeply with full attention
8. Summarize what you heard they said
9. Tell them what you will do with their input
10. Follow-up and tell them what got implemented and what the effects are. Explain in what way they made a difference.
11. Celebrate successes and achievements and training or educational progress
12. Stop often in your business. Make real contact and use the magic word “Thank you.” often.

I’m sure you can find many more ways to express to someone else they matter. Know — when you do that — you will be rewarded with the sense of mattering too. It’s a wonderful gift that keeps giving…

Thank you for reading part 2 of my first article on Medium. That makes you matter to me. In case you missed part 1, you find it here.

Let love lead. Always.

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About the author

Sylvia Becker-Hill
is on a mission to inspire you to find many ways of your own version of “mattering”. She believes the biggest pain in life is wasting our life. Dying after creating a life that mattered will be like leaving a wonderful party: Happily, spent, and filled with gratitude for the experience.

Find out more at:
coaching + art: sylviabecker-hill.com
writing + publishing: becker-hillbooks.com