We’ve got Dry January for anyone tempted to try alcohol abstinence and Stoptober for smokers who want to quit. Now, Scroll Free September will target the use of social media.
The Royal Society for Public Health, which is behind the campaign, is urging everyone to stop using – or reduce use of – Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and other social media platforms for the month.
The campaign is being billed as an “opportunity to take back control of our relationship with social media” for the millions of Britons for whom social media plays a large, possibly unhealthily large, role in their lives.
Excuse me? Since when was any of this the business of a prodnosed pressure group? Public health is a matter of cholera in the water pipes, not what people do in their leisure time, what they imbibe or eat. None of these things are anyone’s business but the individual concerned. So, much as I dislike social media, I dislike the prodnoses at RSPH even more and my advice to them is to butt out and stay out of our lives.
Anyone accepting the challenge can either go cold turkey, abstaining completely for a month, or commit to reduce their use, for example by steering clear of social media at social events or in the evening.
Stick your challenge where the sun doesn’t shine.
Shurely shome mishtake LR?
@ VolksgesundheityUK Stick your challenge where #SunDontShine.
Whatever happened to common sense?
The old rule of “Don’t do anything to excess” came with the unspoken (and unnecessary addendum) of “…or live with the consequences of your own actions”.
I firmly agree that public health should be limited (by statute if necessary) to the protection, prevention and elimination of disease and associated vectors of transmission. Nothing more.
All this bullshit arising from Public Health England (although not them in this instance) and other bodies and lobby groups is right out of order.
Dave “Hug a Hoodie” Cameron was probably the worst Tory PM of the post war era and his support for the “Nudge unit” was not only divisive, but positively un-British. I was both happy and relieved when that smug bastard got his comeuppance on Independence Day 2016.
Fuck your nudging.
May is worse than Cameron. Cameron was vacuous, like Blair. May is hardline totalitarian.
Agreed!
I don’t think that is a bad idea for people to step back and have a think about whether stuff like social media is having a negative effect on their lives. I do have a problem with government funded busy bodies thinking that it is any of their business.
An outfit calling itself Highways England is currently running radio ads suggesting that I should make sure that my car is roadworthy before I set off on my journey. The title of this organisation suggests that they are responsible for keeping the roads car worthy. Maybe they should refrain from branching out until they have that sorted.
“Public health is a matter of cholera in the water pipes, not what people do in their leisure time…”
Once cholera in the water pipes was fixed, did anyone really think all those civil servants would call it a day and get another job?
No, but then again in real life (i.e. outside the Civil Service bubble), when a job is no longer required the job is made redundant and staff reassigned elsewhere within the organization or given notice and some amount of compensation to leave (usually far too little, but that’s neither here nor there)
The entire remit of the Civil Service (and indeed most bureaucracies) is to ensure their own survival and that while specific people and functions might ebb-and-flow the bureaucracy itself can never be reduced in size or power.