Investigation into Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life to Cassell

Octopus imprint Cassell has acquired a book warning against social media by influencer and journalist Katherine Ormerod. 

Entitled Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life, it promises to explain how the addiction has "broken our political systems, re-wired our behavioural patterns, destroyed our confidence and shattered our attention spans". It will also provide advice on how to consume social media in a more healthy way.

Romilly Morgan, commissioning editor at Octopus, acquired world rights from Abigail Bergstrom at Gleam Futures to publish the book as a £12.99 hardback on 21st September 2018.

Ormerod has worked as a journalist for over a decade, starting her career at Sunday Times Style and continuing to Glamour where she was fashion features editor at large. She set up her own fashion social media consultancy in 2014, and in January 2017 followed up with the launch of workworkwork.co, an "antiperfectionism platform".

Ormerod said: "Social media has changed modern womanhood in so many ways and while we’ve all been so busy consuming each other’s lives and curating fantasy versions of our own, there have been dramatic – and sometimes deeply worrying – shifts in the way we see the world, relate to each other and estimate our expectations. Whether it’s career success, romantic relationships, our body image or our health, the filters have messed with all our perspectives on the realities of life.

"But it doesn’t have to be that way. I wanted to write this book to help all women be firstly more conscious of how their social media diet affects their happiness and secondly to help them find a balanced and more healthy way to consume it."