Over the past decades, we have always been connected through social media. There are too many people and too much information all the time, which might not always be good for us. Studies show that social media can make us feel sad, especially because we constantly compare our lives to others. Since people usually only post happy moments, we may feel like our own lives are not as good. The Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson is part of the group who doesn’t like social media and he talked about that in an interview with The Prog Report (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Ian Anderson explains why he doesn’t use social media
“I’m as uninterested as I was back in 1968, ’69, because I think there’s a degree to which it’s nice if someone gives you a little smile or asks for an autograph at the right time, but I don’t depend on it and I certainly don’t want to be smothered with affection or congratulatory communications from people.”
“I’m embarrassed by it. And if people want to be negative and nasty, well, I haven’t got much time for that either. So I’ve never — although we have a presence, obviously, on social media on a number of platforms, which, professionally speaking, we are rather obliged to do. But in terms of personal communication, I have absolutely no interest in reading people’s Twitterings on whatever it’s called these days, whatever ‘battery man’ calls it. X, isn’t it? It’s called X.”
“It’s all of these dependencies that people have, seemingly, on social media, particularly people who are blogging or in some way making their presence felt, they count the happiness of their days in how many followers they have gained and they fall into desperate senses of malaise and self-loathing because the number of followers is reduced. It can really play havoc with your life if you take too much notice of what people think of you. Just have the confidence in your own ability and your own sense of who you are and don’t rely on other people to somehow bolster some insecurity or lack of confidence. It’s not good for the soul.”
He continued:
“So, no, I don’t personally do social media. There are other people who do it on my behalf in the sense of making sure people are aware of what’s going on, but not to to and fro with conversations, whether they’re upbeat and friendly or negative and destructive. I just haven’t got really time or inclination for that kind of discourse. It’s not that I’m old-fashioned, because I’m at the front, in terms of operating programs and software in terms of the things that I really do need to do, musically speaking, I’m using advanced stuff in terms of digital recording and when it comes to photography, for example.”
“I mean, I’m up there with a state of the art in terms of what I do and delivering finished product to people. So, I think I’m not a person who lives in a sublime, dislocated period of either analog or old-fashioned values. I’m very much in touch with what’s happening today, including what’s happening in terms of news and current affairs and politics and religious strife and all the other things that beset our increasingly crowded planet,” Ian Anderson said.
