Feeling isolated during the coronavirus pandemic, Roisin Lovell was drawn to social media to connect with like-minded silver surfers over food, travel, grandchildren and to combat trolls. Wanting to know if their profiles matched their real personalities, she spoke to eight women to dig a little deeper.
I had no idea what to expect when I created a Twitter account for our B&B, Teach Cruachán, in 2012 whilst doing an online marketing course. I barely posted on it for years as I felt the platform wasn’t as business friendly as Facebook. In 2019 I decided to take another look, this time creating a personal account. In 2020 I started to get really involved with the platform. Everyone in the country was restricted to an area within 2km of their home but for me that was Douagh on Achill Island.
To distract myself from the daily reports of hospitalizations and deaths, I started following more people on Twitter. They seemed to have similar interests to me, and were mostly nice and witty. They weren’t ranting about conspiracy theories or talking passionately about politics, but in fairness, there weren’t many of those on Twitter at the time. The group was supportive and friendly, and mostly around my age, 67 years old.