We're All "Dear Abby" But Only I'm Dr. Phyl

Thanks to social media, we’ve all become Dear Abby except none of us is getting paid. I’m on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Nobody is looking for advice on Instagram, but on FB and Threads, I hand out advice at least three times a day.

And Threads is SCARY, let me tell you. At least once a day I see people threatening suicide. It’s hard to tell if people are just seeking attention or if they really are sincere that this post will be their last post forever. I don’t know how many people actually follow through, but I did see one woman respond the next day, grateful that so many people reached out to her. She said she sought mental health assistance and although she had a long road ahead of her, she did not feel as hopeless as the day before. How horrifically sad that she had nobody but strangers to save her life.

It's shocking how many damaged people are out there, lonely and afraid, not willing to go on living anymore or desperate for friends or a romantic relationship. This epidemic of unhappy, lonely people had to have existed before, but I guess we didn’t know about it prior to social media. Now, everyone is out there laying it on the line regardless of what it is.

I follow a group of retirement-age women and some of the posts there make my head spin. They talk about their bowel movements (or lack thereof), their menopausal sexual difficulties, their children who have abandoned them as adults, their husbands they’ve been married to for 50 years and absolutely hate, their husbands who have passed and now they’re so lonely they could die themselves (especially because they have 0 friends), and more. Much more. Some of them post as Anonymous, which is probably for the best, especially if they’re talking about their sexual concerns.

Of course I’m not medically trained, but Dr. Phyl here does have at least an ounce of common sense so I can’t help but respond to some of these people. It’s astounding how many people really cannot come up with a solution to the simplest concern, which may not even quite qualify as a problem.

And Threads also seems to be the in place for posting about the deaths of loved ones, from infancy to the elderly and everything in between. It’s so depressing how many people have cancer or heart disease, and every now and then a family member goes on someone’s account and says that so and so has passed away. For a neurotic like me, reading this daily can be devastating, which is such a selfish thing for me to say, but true.

The reason I have social media is for my writing because it is required that you have a social media following in order to ever get published by anyone but yourself. Therefore, I try to establish dialogue in order to grow my following and I’m constantly exposed to all this sadness, grief and pain.

So anyway, if you want free advice that you probably won’t use, feel free to post something or just email me. I’ll respond in a timely manner.