When was the last time you evaluated the role of social media in your life? This week, I did a long overdue social media cleanup. Reconsidering the purpose of these platforms that consume so much of our time was a worthwhile exercise.

Welcome to the 101^st edition of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a simple living challenge for the week. In addition to my social media cleanup, this week’s edition looks at rising chocolate prices, the pledge of U.S. faith leaders to continue the fight against climate change, why hydrogen-fuelled aircraft are not the answer, and learning to say no.  

On my mind this week: A long overdue social media cleanup

As I reread Joshua Becker’s Things That Matter to support my 2025 theme of intentionality, one of the action items I noted was a need to reduce the distraction of technology in my life. With that in mind, I set a goal for February to do a long overdue social media cleanup.

You might have noticed there isn’t a lot of good news being shared online these days. That’s why this social media cleanup couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m selective about who I follow, but the AI bots constantly curate trending or “suggested for me” content that simply doesn’t align with my values. All too often, I find myself getting caught up in doomscrolling. It’s bad for my mental health.

Let the cleanup begin!

Taking inventory

I started my social media cleanup by making a list of all my accounts—personal accounts and those I use for my blog and retirement coaching business. For each one, I noted what I use it for.

Here’s where I started.

Platform	Primary Use
Facebook	Personal to keep up with family and friends. Boomer Eco Crusader page to promote blog posts.
Instagram – Personal	Keep up with family and friends.
Instagram – Boomer Eco Crusader	Promote blog posts. Keep in touch with the Climate Change Collective group.
LinkedIn	Professional networking. Support and promote my retirement coaching work.
Pinterest	Promote blog posts. Find recipes and other useful information.
Substack – Boomer Eco Crusader	Read pieces related to the content I write on my blog.
Threads	Don’t use it much.
Twitter/X	Keep up on news. Promote blog posts.

Considering the role and purpose of each platform

Next, I considered the role and purpose of each account on the list. I asked myself some important questions. Why do I use this platform? What purpose does it serve in my life?

After weighing the pros and cons, I decided to keep these accounts:

• I have a love/hate relationship with both Facebook and Instagram. I love that they help me stay in touch with faraway family and friends, but I hate that my feeds have more advertising and questionable content than updates from the family and friends I want to hear from. Ultimately, the positives outweigh the negatives so I’ll keep them both…for now. I did take some time to remove, snooze, and unfollow some of my contacts.
• LinkedIn is definitely the most informative and useful of all my social media accounts. It lets me keep up with valuable business information and has been helpful in promoting my retirement coaching business. It’s a keeper!
• I consider Pinterest more of a search engine than a social media site. It is one of my main sources of blog traffic, and my go-to source for new recipes.  Another keeper.

As for Substack, the jury is still out. I created the account thinking I might use it to share some of my writing, but I mostly consume content related to the things I write about. I’ll keep it for now and re-evaluate my strategy in the coming months. 

Saying good-bye to accounts that no longer serve me

Finally, I decided to delete the following accounts.

• Twitter/X – Kudos to King Elon for turning what used to be a helpful platform for staying on top of local and other news into a toxic minefield of hateful content. Deleting my Twitter account felt so good!
• Threads – I set this up a couple of years ago and never really used it. Deleting it was an easy decision.

Making a conscious effort to reduce my time on social media

Even with the platforms I decided to keep, I recognize I need to be more aware of how much time I spend on them, and the time they take away from other things.

For my next challenge, I’ve decided to give up all personal social media activity for Lent this year. Stay tuned for more information.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on doing a social media cleanup. Have you deleted any of your accounts? Drop me a comment below to let me know.

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• Snow, snow and more snow. I am grateful to be retired and not have to go anywhere. And kudos to the snowplow drivers who do a terrific job of keeping us moving. The snowbanks on our street are as high as I’ve ever seen. And there’s another 20 to 30 cm of snow on the way this weekend. Where’s that groundhog who predicted an early spring?
• My husband and I braved the cold on Wednesday to go out for a nice lunch at one of our favourite restaurants.
• We celebrate Valentine’s Day on Friday with takeout fish & chips, cupcakes from a small neighbourhood bakery, and chocolate.

Things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are three things I learned this week:

Climate change impacts chocolate prices

I don’t have many vices, but chocolate definitely tops the list. You might have noticed that chocolate is a lot more expensive than it used to be. Well, it turns out we can thank climate change for that.

Rising temperatures in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria—the four African countries that supply 70% of the world’s cacao—are leading to poor crop yields. This has resulted in a 400% increase in the price of cacao in recent years.

(Source: City News Kitchener)

U.S. faith groups pledge to fight climate change

With extreme right leaning groups who call themselves “Christians” exerting so much influence in U.S. politics these days, it was heartening to hear this week that many faith leaders in the United States and around the world are pledging to continue the fight against climate change.

Some 839 faith communities joined with 2,978 businesses, 428 universities and colleges, 175 major investors, 362 local governments, 10 states, and 13 tribal nations in declaring they will continue the work of fulfilling the U.S. pledge to the Paris Agreement.

(Source: Yale Climate Connections)

Hydrogen-fuelled aircraft are not the answer

The aviation industry touts hydrogen aircraft as the green solution of the future. Not so fast! It turns out these claims may just be another example of greenwashing.

Although it does show promise, hydrogen will only be zero emission if it is produced using green electricity. Producing hydrogen takes a huge amount of electricity—about ten times as much renewable electricity as exists in the world today.

(Source: Lloyd Alter on Substack)

This week’s simple living challenge – Learning to say no

Simplifying life is a big part of living more intentionally. With that in mind, I kicked off the year with 52 ways to simplify your life this year, including a downloadable checklist of weekly tasks.

This week’s challenge is to declutter our minds and our calendars by learning to say no. Focusing our attention on the vital few, instead of the trivial many, can reduce stress and improve our quality of life. Learn how in this post.

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I’d love to hear what you think about any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.