Tag Archives: Facebook

Should You Keep Social Media After Retirement?

2 Replies

One aspect of retirement that I never considered was how it would affect my profile on social media.

Nearly a year after leaving the last of my two part-time jobs, now working a contract gig that averages only 20 hours a month, I’m not sure I see the point in continuing to create and curate an online profile. At least not on a professionally oriented site like LinkedIn.

This is no small decision for a careerist who’s held public-facing positions.

I’ve been active on Facebook for years (true to my Boomer demographic) and a more occasional presence on LinkedIn and Twitter, pre–Elon Musk. Nine years ago — at the urging of young adults at work — I began toe-dipping into Instagram, which I had written off as a visual playground for photos of food, pets and sunsets.

Now that I no longer have professional contacts to impress, or any particular public image to maintain, is keeping up with social media still worth my time? To answer that question, I’ve come up with a set of criteria to evaluate whether I will retain any of these platforms at age 69, with my full-time, full-bore career four years behind me.

LinkedIn logo
Instagram

The following considerations will help me decide:

  • Can I be my whole self on this platform? This is important given the 21 years I spent as a communications professional for private colleges and universities, when any social media musings — even with the disclaimer that “posts are my own” — potentially reflected on the institution and once got me into deep trouble with my employer.
  • Do I enjoy and learn from other people’s content? This has become an issue for me in the progressive echo chamber that is Bluesky, where I silenced myself in declaring preferences for mayoral candidates in the Twin Cities, for example, because my views seemed more centrist and nuanced than the people I am following. Given the acerbic tone on Bluesky, I pause as I review political or policy discussions — the latest being the Democratic U.S. Senate race in Minnesota between Peggy Flanagan and Angie Craig — and ask myself: Are pissy exchanges with strangers worth this much emotional energy?
  • Does this feel like a creative outlet or an obligation? I posted a reel on Instagram the other day for the first time since late March after my weekly volunteer shift at a local food shelf. It gave me a little thrill, and I was proud of the message (“just show up”). But given that my first post on Instagram was in March 2017, and I’ve posted only 125 times since then, I am unlikely to become an influencer or even attract many followers beyond my friends and family.

Cutting the cord, deleting the accounts, wiping the slate clean just feels so . . . final. Like a concession to being old and out of touch. It’s the digital equivalent of burning journals — and eliminating a piece of my history that once felt important.

This is where the three criteria are going to help me.

News source or entertainment?

I’d never thought of Instagram as a news site until Trump’s ICE agents invaded Minnesota last January, detaining and assaulting immigrants and other people of color and killing two white citizens on the street in broad daylight. The horror, the family separations, the economic impacts of that brutality will never leave our collective consciousness.

Amid it all, as I used the newspaper and public radio and neighborhood Signal chats to follow the violence and resistance, I noticed that my older son in London, then 35, seemed to have a better handle on the goings-on than I did.

Younger people are more likely to be regular news consumers on TikTok, Instagram, Reddit and X. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say they get news from Instagram.

Pew Research Center, September 25, 2025

“This ICE stuff in the Cities is insane,” he wrote me on WhatsApp on January 17, 2026, a week before agents murdered Alex Pretti. “I’m seeing at least 3–4 new videos every day of something horrible. Two people have been shot, one kid permanently blinded. Shot from point blank with a pepper ball and dragged away by his collar.”

When I asked Sam about his news source, he replied instantly: Instagram. “Everyone is recording and posting everything,” he said. And then he directed me to Unicorn Riot, from which algorithms eventually led me to all kinds of local heroes and local news — on the ground, unfiltered, in real time.

Instagram is the social media site where I am learning the most from other people’s posts and reels. Where I think less about cultivating a “professional” persona and feel most free to get creative with what I want to present, as I did in the first reel I posted, during the ICE invasion.

  • My reasons for staying? Instagram checks all three of my boxes: whole self, creativity and education. News source or entertainment? I like that Instagram is both.

You’re my Bluesky . . . or not

I joined Bluesky by invitation — the only way to get on the platform initially — in September 2023. I was managing editor of Streets.mn, a community-oriented online magazine in the Twin Cities, and up until that time, Twitter had been my go-to platform to build sources and follow trends among the multimodal advocates, urban planners, city zoning experts and climate activists — the self-described “urbanists” — who were far younger than I was.

My Twitter profile, which dated back to 2008, had a photo of my dogs, a description of me as both an employee and a volunteer, and lots of posts about women’s basketball, reproductive rights and local politics. The platform felt more entrepreneurial and less polished and performative than Facebook, and I responded in kind.

Elon Musk changed that. Once the billionaire took over Twitter in October 2022, eventually rebranding it to X with a foreboding black background, the left-leaning regulars already were abandoning it. Progressives started migrating to Bluesky in February 2023, when the platform was being beta-tested as an invitation-only app and a year after Bluesky — which started as a Twitter initiative back in 2019 — had officially spun off from X.

By late 2024, when Bluesky was fully open to the public, major media like Forbes and CBS News were covering people’s exodus from Twitter. I had no interest in associating myself with Musk or the second Trump regime, but the larger reason why I quit posting to X in November 2024 (though I have maintained my account, for posterity, I suppose) was that I didn’t want my Streets.mn sources and writers to think I was out of touch.

In true social media style, I had an image to maintain, in this case as the still “with it” older woman.

Truth is, since resigning from the editorial position, I have struggled to discover who I am on Bluesky. I was there in a role, as an editor who made connections because it served my job. Now the task is to shape and share my own identity. But I don’t find the platform receptive to who I am.

My blog posts on mindful aging generate little engagement, and the one time I tried to reveal myself — describing my despair when thieves ransacked my well-tended Little Free Library — one commenter shrugged: “I thought that’s what Little Free Libraries are for.”

Conservative columnist George Will recently described a progressive politician as being “fluent in the online snark and condescension that clog social media.” Though I take issue with Will on any number of issues, I do agree with those who’ve criticized Bluesky as a “monoculture” that neither invites nor elevates dissenting views.

  • Using my own criteria, what are the reasons for staying? I can’t think of any. I rarely bother to post anymore.

The last ‘Link’ to professionalism?

I recently revised my résumé from four single-spaced pages to a single sheet that emphasizes volunteering, family and personal interests, names me as retired and focuses on the attributes (“well organized, high energy, community minded”) that I hope will land me a part-time job, at some point, at a neighborhood business.

The résumé does list my LinkedIn profile, which these days showcases my blog and freelance writing and the publication I write and edit for the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota. So, that’s reason enough to keep the account active, even though I’ve posted only six times this year and the “impressions” for each post have been diminishing.

LinkedIn allows professionals, including the middle class, to invest in themselves in order to find the right jobs.

Democratic mega-donor and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman

LinkedIn takes hits for being inauthentic, promoting “humble bragging” and trading in “personal brand growth.” I use it as a professional bulletin board and an online space that feels safe. Because it’s meant for career-building, LinkedIn has a decorum that appeals to my understanding of what constructive dialogue and “good manners” means.

Several of my retired peers have kept their LinkedIn pages, though they rarely post. “I wanted people to know I retired,” says one, “and I don’t see any harm in keeping it. Today it told me my cousin has a new job, and I wouldn’t have known without LinkedIn. It’s interesting to see what people are up to.”

Another friend laughs that her LinkedIn page is “deep in cobwebs. I don’t even remember my password at this point.” I’ve worked in the field of information currency and communications for too long to keep a site active that I never look at or maintain.

  • Reason for staying? That’s a fourth criterion. Because for now, at least, it serves me.

Don’t Patronize Products that Patronize You

Leave a reply

At a time of life when my income is increasingly limited, with a set monthly amount from Social Security, a small pension from my years as a newspaper journalist and whatever I can scratch up from contract work, everyone is pitching me to spend money on stuff I neither want nor need.

The neighborhood newspaper I subscribe to invariably has advertising inserts for pricey senior living buildings that deliver less than what they promise, if my late mother’s experience is any example. The spam calls from people wanting to sell me burial insurance have morphed from being a joke (talk about feeling old!) to merely an annoyance, especially after I’ve told the caller that I plan to be cremated.

But the most egregious examples of unwanted sales pitches are the omnipresent ads in my personal Gmail account. Every time I check email, which is multiple times a day from my iPhone, at least two new “sponsored” emails pop up, many advertising products or experiences I have never purchased or even searched for online.

Recent examples include:

  • An ad for a women’s “three-wheel e-bike” by a manufacturer that clearly views the word “tricycle” as a turnoff, though that’s what it is;
  • A promise of “$5,000 off any trip” from Overseas Adventure Travel, which specializes in expensive luxury group tours, including for solo (read: widowed and well-heeled) travelers;
  • Ads for Eileen Fisher’s “responsibly made” tops that offer “the right mix of comfort and style” — flattering, just-below-the-waist designs meant to hide the thicker midsections women develop after menopause; and
  • Skechers slip-in shoes, all flats, with catchy names like “Classy Cruiser” and “Reggae Slim.” This may be the most practical example of all, given that no woman I know in her 60s wears high heels for any but the most special occasion, and even then, she likely packs her walking shoes in a discreet cloth bag.

Despite living in an Amazon-influenced era, I don’t like to shop online. Plus, I’ve grown increasingly impatient with advertising now that I record the TV shows and women’s basketball games I want to watch precisely so I can zip through the commercials — a shocking number of which are for prescriptions with a litany of scary or smelly side effects.

But that’s not the problem. What disturbs me is advertisers’ assumptions about seniors, which rarely line up with the realities and reflections of my post-career life. Or with the passions, politically fueled anxieties and inevitable physical afflictions that dominate conversations with my friends.

“The public’s perception of aging is . . . antithetical to how most older people feel and what experts in the field know to be true.”

National Center to Reframe Aging

Not all of us want to travel abroad, pamper our pets, fix up our homes (we’re lucky if they’re paid for) or attend cultural events that occur downtown at night. Yet that is what the sponsored ads in my Gmail account push: new windows, cheaper internet, a dinner theater 23 miles away, a Tai Chi walking program that looks laughably slow for a fitness walker who moves 18,000 steps a day.

What I want from Gmail is no ads at all. I’m no one’s target market anymore. Or at least push the products and places I care about: good face cream, artsy earrings and glasses frames, locally owned bookstores and bike shops. By this age, I know what I want and need.

I understand, sort of, how algorithms work. That an ad not just for L.L. Bean but for their fleece-lined bedroom slippers and winter-walking Stabilicers will show up as banner ads on other websites after I’ve scrolled the Bean site for just those items.

So, yes, I get it that many of the sponsored ads in my personal Gmail — which, oddly, never show up in my work-related account — relate to some web search or another. I don’t want an e-trike (at least not yet), but I do read “Bicycling” magazine online. Maybe the ad for shapeless shirt dresses from Maye, a company I’ve never heard of, is there because the algorithm knows I’m 68, an age at which many women have developed enough self-confidence and common sense to prioritize comfort over body-hugging fashion.

Or am I giving the faceless algorithm too much credit?

A recent article titled “Marketing to Seniors,” which promised “transformative insights” into reaching my digital-wary demographic, manages to be both heartwarming and offensive — not unlike the senior-focused ads I see.

  • On the upside: The urge toward “straightforward language” and “offering customer support through phone calls rather than automated messages” strikes me as practical and respectful. Whatever our level of digital savvy, or lack thereof, we Baby Boomers are comfortable and conversant with a telephone.
  • On the downside: The article’s call to feature photos of people “5 to 10 years younger than your target demographic” because “it’s how folks tend to see themselves” may be accurate, I’m sorry to say, but it also is blatantly ageist and emotionally cruel.

Employing younger people to sell products and services to seniors plays on the insecurities and fears of older women, in particular, who for decades have been barraged with the fiction that only youth can be attractive.

Photo by Rosa Rafael on Unsplash

In the United States alone, the beauty industry is expected to garner $106 billion (yes, B for billion) in 2026. And now the folks who are marketing senior housing, flowing clothing and expensive foreign trips are instructed by advertising experts to employ models whose only sign of authentic aging is coiffed white hair.

I’d like people my age — women, especially — to fight ageism by boycotting products that imply growing old is a shameful condition to be hidden and denied. Older Americans Month in May urges us “to recognize the contributions of older adults” and “to raise awareness concerning elder abuse and neglect.” Let’s also grant older people the dignity of portraying us as we are, even if the advertising art directors think their necks will never wrinkle, their eyebrows won’t thin and their thighs will forever remain smooth.

Shopping can stimulate cognitive processes, provide physical benefits, and function as a leisure pursuit that promotes social engagement. 

Comfort Keepers, “Benefits of Shopping for Older Adults“

It isn’t that I dislike spending money. I’m as susceptible as anyone to the dopamine fix of treating myself to things and experiences, whether new walking shoes or a weekend getaway. But as I grow older, I am both more philanthropic — if by “philanthropy” you also count generosity with your grown children — and more intentional about where I invest my finite resources.

Age has shifted my priorities and patterns.

I enjoy shopping, especially for groceries, and try to support the shops and restaurants in my neighborhood, especially after seeing several go dark during COVID. Recently I learned that elderly folks (not quite where I am yet) benefit from in-person shopping because it gets them outside, keeps them moving, prods them to make decisions and handle money, and forces interactions with others younger than themselves.

Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash

Less need or desire for stuff, an aversion to online shopping and a commitment to supporting my own community all make me a poor target for the products that companies are pitching me online. Except maybe this one: The You Are Enough Co. spammed me with an ad recently for “Dear Person” T-shirts and sweatshirts.

Curious about the concept, I clicked through and learned that You Are Enough aims to boost and normalize mental health awareness through clothing that proclaims to onlookers: “The world needs you” and “You are great.”

I may buy one and gift it to an older woman who needs a reminder that, no matter how much society tries to convince her to hide her age, she is fine just as she is. She’s earned her wear and wrinkles.

Then again, maybe I’ll keep that T-shirt for myself.

Dog bites woman: lessons learned

2 Replies

Getting injured tends to make me reflective because it forces me to sit still, which I don’t do well. Even at 62, I value movement and action — to a fault, I am finding as I grow older.

Suffering a dog bite at an off-leash dog park, a juicy and unexpected chomp to my bare left calf, has left me hobbled, bleeding, aching, afraid, exhausted and unable to sustain my usual pace. I sought medical attention, after initially resisting, and two days later succumbed to the first round of rabies shots.

Mia_2019

Mia, my beloved Animal Humane Society rescue, gets ready for our morning run.

Here is what I’ve learned from the ordeal:

1. Posting on social media can turn bad luck to good advice: “You should have called Animal Control immediately,” said my experienced older sister, also a dog lover. “They would have impounded and quarantined the dogs.”

Problem is, I was so rattled, calling the authorities did not occur to me. What now? “At this point, I would ask the police to visit the dog owner,” my sister told me a day later. “She needs to be deterred from coming back to the dog park.” Numerous others on Facebook agreed. One even speculated I could be awarded $5,000 to $10,000 per puncture wound through the woman’s homeowner’s insurance. Well, maybe.

2. Trusting people based on superficial qualities leads to speculative results. The first question I asked the woman who insisted her dog only “scratched” me was whether her animal’s shots were up to date. “Of course,” she said. She looked trustworthy. But what does that mean? Turn over that rock, and out slither some stereotypical assumptions.

“Diana,” likely not her real name, was articulate and well dressed. She drove a nice van. She seemed friendly, approaching me later in the park — along with that damn dog! — to see whether I was alright. Again, being rattled and bleeding and in pain, I did not think to say: “Call my cell phone, so I have your number.” Instead, I texted myself the number that she told me, and this apparently trustworthy, friendly looking woman lied.

3. “Tough it out” is an ineffective strategy with an animal bite. Among the advice on Facebook, which I ignored for three days:

  • “You need proof that this animal is vaccinated.”
  • “Get to a doctor with that wound stat.”
  • “I didn’t go to the doctor when a dog bit my finger and ended up having surgery for an infected finger bone. My primary-care doc said to always get antibiotics.”

Ego can drive these decisions, especially as we get older and want to prove that we’re still strong and healthy. I remember a woman 10 years my senior telling me that she feels more “vulnerable,” physically. Not me! I arrogantly believed I could heal on my own, if I kept the wound covered and kept up my usual pattern of walking 14,000 steps daily. Bad plan, as the nurse practitioner affirmed when she prescribed amoxicillin for my weeping wound.

4. Short-term physical pain is worth long-term peace of mind. Because “Diana” gave me the wrong phone number, because I failed to follow her to her van and photograph the license plate, I had no way to reach her. Therefore, I had no way of proving that her dog had current vaccinations.

A doctor said the risk of rabies was low, given that the apparently cared for dog was at a dog park, not some crazed animal foaming at the mouth, To Kill a Mockingbird–style, that leaped out of the bushes on a jogging path. The Department of Health said otherwise. The only way to ensure I would not get rabies was to get the dreaded rabies shots. “I think the DOH is butt covering,” I told my oldest sister, the pragmatic one. “Maybe so,” she replied, “but rabies is fatal if you get it.” A quick Google search proved that to be true.

And the shots? Not nearly as painful as folklore would have it — or apparently, as invasive as they used to be. When I heard that the initial injections were in the wound, I pictured a doctor plunging a needle straight into the bite site (which remains painful to the touch eight days post-trauma). In fact, the doctor inserted the needles horizontally in the skin next to the wound, on either side, and then energetically rubbed the bite site so it could absorb the serum. That was the worst, and it was over quickly.

Gabby_smallest

Gabby, our rescue puppy from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the Dakotas

5. Keep the faith. “Here’s what I know,” wrote a former colleague on Facebook, a man who recently traveled across several states to buy a hunting dog. “There are many, many more bad dog owners than there are bad dogs.” Of course, he’s right.

One woman warned me about PTSD, predicting that I may never be able to return to dog parks. Another offered to connect me with a therapist who specializes in “dog-bite trauma.” I’m not afraid of dogs, which I have owned for most of my life. What I am wary of is lackadaisical dog owners — ones like my neighbor who lets his golden retrievers walk unleashed on city streets, reassuring passersby that the dogs are friendly.

I never intended to sue “Diana.” What I wanted was an apology, an acknowledgment of the pain I suffered and an offer to pay my medical bills. I wanted her to make things right, and she failed me. But I won’t give up on dogs, not today. Not ever. I need their love and loyalty in an increasingly hostile world.