Pinterest – For Good or For Evil

My mother is more plugged in to social media than I am.

The first time my mom sent me an invitation to join Pinterest, I scoffed at the idea.  I told myself that the last thing I needed was another way to waste time online, which is why I was no longer paying much interest to my Facebook account.  But curiosity got the best of me about a month later and I dug around my inbox until I found the invite email.  My plan was to avoid the option of requesting an invite, as I don’t know a single person who has successfully joined that way, whereas an invite from a friend instantly gets you access. 

Unfortunately, my fears were all legitimate:  My first three weeks as a Pinterest user were spent repinning like a madwoman day and night.  I couldn’t pull myself away from it and I felt like I had to get to the end of the recommended pins page or I’d have to start all over again.  Luckily, I snapped out of my OCD moment long enough to reevaluate and took a really big step back. 

I promised myself that I would not use Pinterest for evil. 

I set some ground rules to keep the obsessive pinning at bay:

1. Check your pins.  I’m sure I haven’t been careful enough with this, but I’m trying to get in the habit of clicking the pin through to the website to make sure the link works.  I don’t want to be passing on something corrupted or spammy to anyone else.
2. Use ‘em or lose ‘em.  I try not to repin anything that I won’t either use later or really want to look at (pinboards acting as visual collections).  If it’s not going to be useful, that’s what the like button is for.
3. Monthly review ‘n remove.  I try to go through my pins at least once a month to remove any that aren’t working or I don’t care about anymore.  This will not hurt anyone else’s repins, don’t worry.
4. Monthly review ‘n choose.  I go through and find at least a few pins to apply to my life somehow.  The first time I did this kind of review, I made lemon honey (which I still use - I’ve already gone through three jars of it).  Most recently I used a pin on how to correctly prune basil, something I hadn't even thought to look up before. 
5. Beware the spam.  I recently searched for pins having to do with weight loss and ended up with a page full of pins that all had the same advertisement for a weight-loss program in the text field.  After months of pinning, I had to go back and make sure none of my old pins were spam because I hadn't thought to check.  

Using my pinning powers for good.

Since becoming a more responsible pinner, I rarely find myself sitting in front of the computer for long hours with nothing to show for it.  I know, I know, you were hoping I would say the obsessive pinning was a thing of the past, but let’s face it – Pinterest, even when being used for good, is probably going to suck up at least some of your time.   You'll have to decide if it's worth it to you.  It can be a really fun site and a fun way to share things you like with people you know (as well as complete strangers).  If nothing else, keep in mind that you can join, try it out and then run -screaming- away from it, if it's not going to be a healthy habit for you.


Make sure you read the Pinterest Terms of Service and Pin Etiquette, whether you've just decided to get your pin on or already pinning to your heart's content.