Tag Archives: Social media

Should You Keep Social Media After Retirement?

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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.

Sit Still! Can a ‘Staycation’ Become a Daily Practice?

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I skipped my company Christmas party this year — not a smart move for a new employee who hopes to grow her job and widen her influence at work.

It wasn’t because I’d had a lousy week and my boss had barked at me (though both are true). I just needed a night at home, alone, after six straight days of having e-mails, texts and virtual meetings intrude on weekend plans and overtake every evening.

My iPhone is running my life. More accurately, my connectivity-fueled agenda is my life, and the signs of that imbalance — inability to concentrate, a craving for constant movement and excitement, and, recently, the not-so-subtle suggestions from coworkers and friends that I seem hyper and wired — have me worried.

Which leads to less sleep and more caffeine.

What’s an over-achiever to do? What else? Draw up a list on the iPhone. Make a plan.

Power down

Love it, hate it

Lately I have been drawn to media reports about the downside of an internet-amplified, over-scheduled life:

  • Ever check your iPhone before and after a Sunday matinee? Or read e-mail on the sidelines of a soccer game? Me, too. In fact, the tools designed to keep us current and organized have stolen our leisure, according to a special report in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the cost of living in a state of fast-moving distraction.

“Plugged in 24/7/365, we are constantly struggling to keep up but are always falling further behind,” the Chronicle declares. “The faster we go, the less time we seem to have. As our lives speed up, stress increases, and anxiety trickles down from managers to workers, and parents to children.”

Read a book or a newspaper in its original form, he says, without the temptation to click through to related sites or articles on your portable device. Daydream. Sit still. (And do what?)

  • “The time I’ve spent going nowhere is going to sustain me much more than the time I’ve spent running around,” says travel writer Pico Iyer. He schedules some amount of downtime every day to reflect on and process his various experiences.

In an August 2014 TED talk called “The Art of Stillness,” Iyer described how Wired founding editor Kevin Kelly found the space and creativity to write his latest book by eliminating smart phones and television from his home. Take an “Internet Sabbath” at least one day a week, Iyer says, “in order to develop the perspective and sense of direction when you go online again.”

What is scary about stillness?

I’ve been taking stay-at-home vacations since before the shorthand, staycation, was even coined. My husband and I couldn’t afford to travel when we were raising our two sons. Plus, I enjoyed hanging out at our small-town home after daily commutes to the city.

When colleagues asked, “Where are you going?” my standard reply would be: “Off the clock.” Lately, I’ve amended that to “off the iPhone.”

Since finally buying a smart phone in May 2012, I’ve learned that a staycation is no vacation if I stay plugged in to office e-mail and my social media accounts. Nor is time off a break if I’m scheduled dawn to dusk with workouts, lunches, errands and appointments.

A Type A person tends to see weekends or vacations not as opportunities to relax and recharge but as prime time to get things done. And that’s OK, she tells herself, because the busyness is tied to her family and friends. Problem is, the deeper I get into middle age, the more I find that “always on” is not sustainable.

I want to live more in silence, not with Minnesota Public Radio on as background news and noise, not with music blaring while I clean or cook, but silence. Without distraction, with myself. I want more mental freedom, more unstructured moments to get lost in a book or in my thoughts.

I want to live more often without a schedule and the tools that tie me to it.

“Be curious,” one of my yoga instructors used to say. So, what would happen if:

  • I swore off caffeine for 24 hours?
  • I invited a friend out spontaneously?
  • I did yoga at home, instead of in a structured class, and followed wherever my mind and body took me?
  • I turned off my iPhone for an entire weekend?
  • I committed to focused reading time for a natural wind-down in the evening?
  • I explored the observation my mother made of me long ago: “You’re always on the go. What are you running from, I wonder?”

I won’t find the answer till I learn how to be still.

Flexibility, Focus Ease Strain of Midlife Career Shifts

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Sarah Berger, 47, insists she wasn’t afraid when she got downsized from her director-level job in early September — even though she is single and solely responsible for her mortgage and other household expenses. Even though it’s her second career transition in four years.

Even though — as is often said of women on the other side of 40 — she isn’t getting any younger.

“It doesn’t pay to panic,” Berger explains. And here’s where age and experience served her: “I was feeling confident about what I’d achieved. I felt I had something to offer.

“As soon as I got laid off, literally driving home, I already was putting together my list of people to call,” she says.

Berger began with the women in her book club. “These are professional, well-connected women who believe in lifting up others. So I knew that if I called on them, they would use their network to help me.”

A fund-raising professional, she landed an even better position in mid-October — six weeks to the day after her layoff.

“The networking for me was key,” says Berger, the new director of resource development and communications at Neighborhood House, a nonprofit with a 117-year tradition of serving immigrants, refugees and low-income populations in the Twin Cities.

LinkedIn cartoon

Purposeful connections

This so-called “hidden job market” — in which a matrix of personal and professional connections opens doors — accounts for up to 80 percent of new hires, according to Forbes magazine.

That’s why Cathy McLane, 52, began rebuilding her network a year ago when she decided to ease herself out of a role as marketing and communications director at a prestigious private school in suburban Minneapolis. McLane had been there 14 years and recognizes now that she “had clearly stayed too long.”

She was out of practice in the discipline of connecting with professional peers — and out of step with the digital ways networking is now conducted. “I didn’t realize how deep I’d gotten in my little rut, my happy rut,” she says.

McLane activated her social media presence, which now includes 379 connections on LinkedIn and 578 followers on Twitter, with a handle — @CathyConnects — that describes where she wants her career to grow.

And, because no Tweet beats a face-to-face meeting, she started calling on people in similar roles at health care organizations and in higher education (including me, during my years at St. Catherine University). “People warned me that the level of job I want will come through knowing someone who knows the hiring manager,” McLane explains.

She was businesslike, professional and prepared in her informational interviews. And, without fail, she observed three practices:

  • Ask your business contact who else you should meet.
  • Write a timely and specific “thank you” note.
  • Purposefully stay in touch. “Part of networking should be giving back,” McLane says. “You want to add value. So if I find a good article or blog or website, I send that out.”

‘The age thing’

Six months after leaving her job, McLane has yet to land an equivalent career position. She’s got a long-term contract doing project management and internal communications for Cargill, which she hopes will become the “seed client” of the business she is launching: Cathy Connects LLC.

The glass ceiling she hit during her job search is less about gender than age. “People don’t always want 20 years of experience,” McLane says, because it calls up all sorts of speculations and suspicions:

  • Will you demand a higher salary?
  • Will you be digitally savvy?
  • Can you keep pace with the speed of change in today’s workforce?
  • Will you stay in a position for which you’re clearly “over-qualified”?

Consultant Sue Plaster, a former communications and HR executive who herself was laid off at age 50, says the economy and “the age thing” hit middle-aged men and women equally hard, though women likely pay a higher price for looking older. “The self-confidence aspects of the job search are really challenging,” she says.

And so, three pieces of advice for people in a midlife career transition — from three women who have been there:

  • Plaster: “Invest in a professional headshot for LinkedIn that portrays you in a favorable way — not a glamour shot but no selfies either.”
  • McLane: “Take space, not time,” she says, quoting Karen Himle, the recently named vice president of corporate communications at Thrivent Financial. Rather than mindlessly filling up your calendar, “slow down and take space to reorient: What’s important? What makes you happy?”
  • Berger: “I did not say no to a coffee date, ever. My goal was to make one contact a day. Those professional networks are really important.”

Lesson learned: “I have yet to meet one person who’s transitioned who hasn’t landed in a good place. It’s how you approach life, your attitude,” concludes Cathy McLane.