“If you want to feed the homeless, then feed the homeless. But the moment you post it on social media, you’re also feeding your ego.”
Unknown
Social media is a great place to keep in touch, or is it tearing us apart? Facebook started off innocent, the idea behind it to bring people closer together sounded so appealing. We were given the option to stay connected to friends near and far, find family we never knew existed, join groups of shared interests and so much more. A beautiful community. Once facebook boomed, along come other apps that offered similar benefits like Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. All of these social media apps were created to allow us to share every aspect of our lives. From pictures to posts, and sharing things we like, all at our fingertips with the invention of smartphones. Quickly, these types of websites and apps caught on changing the way we interact with the world around us. Soon enough we were glued to the screens, refreshing the pages, trying to stay on top of the latest posts. We turned to artificial connection instead of real. There was a heavy value to the number of likes each picture or post got. Forming was this want for a sort of attention we didn’t know we needed. It gave us this sense of satisfaction when we received the most likes and comments and followers. It was altering our minds and changing how we interacted with our world. We all fall victim to this cycle, this crave for attention and this crave to share our lives on the internet. When we are bored we turn to our phones and social media. When we need to pass the time away we turn to social media. Even when we are hanging out with our friends we turn to our phones and social media. Are we in too deep to change what this has done to us?
I have been thinking a lot about the reasons we are so quick to post our pictures on social media. I have noticed over the past couple of years I have started to create a bit of distance with social media. I have found myself enjoying the privacy of using a polaroid knowing those pictures only I would see. I have found myself taking this step back from posting and getting more satisfied with just living for myself. To keep these moments I spend with my friends and family to myself. Understanding that just because you don’t see it plastered on social media doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You can be with your friends and have this amazing adventure and enjoy the time spent with them and not post about. I see it all the time, people so quick to post that they are out with their friends or traveling. It causes so much jealousy and it triggers this feeling of being left out. That you are missing something. It has been proven that social media has caused an increase in depression, loneliness, and anxiety. Spending so much time on our phones we are over stimulating our brains. We are not giving ourselves time to be with our own thoughts. We are filling our minds with images that cause us to think negatively of ourselves. Something I started to really come to terms with over the past few years is not to compare someone’s five minutes to your 24 hours. We get into this mind frame that this person we are following whether its youtube or facebook or Instagram is living this perfect life because of what they are posting. We start to compare their lives to our own, becoming increasingly envious of them and their supposed amazing life. What we forget to remind ourselves is that we are only getting a peek into their world. We are only getting to see a small fraction into their lives, the part that they want us to see. They have perfectly crafty their social media image to what they want you to see. You are not seeing the other side of things. This is what social media is doing to us.
I do believe social media has negatively impacted our society and I know that based on my own personal experiences. I am well aware of how much social media has changed me and my life. Thanks to Apple’s new update, the company has brought to our attention just how much we use our phones, how much time we spend looking at our screen. When I first saw mine, I was disturbed. Its hours that I have lost, hours I spent mindlessly scrolling, wasting away seconds of my day I will never get back. For what? To have a window into other people’s lives. What are we getting out of that? What could I be doing instead of scrolling on Facebook or Instagram? The past couple of months I have had this hyper-awareness of just how much I have been using social media. I have tried to limit how much time I spend. After an hour my apps become locked. It worked for a couple of weeks until it became too easy to type in my passcode and unlock it. I have seen a number of people completely delete their apps and they say how much their lives have improved since and I applaud them. I want to do that as well but I have this fear of missing out. I know this fear has been created by my addiction to these apps. Does it even matter that I see these posts from the people I follow? When I think about deleting my apps even just for a month to detox, my brain goes right to thinking well I know I have this coming up and I’m going to want to post about it. But why do I have this need to post? In this strange way, I kind of almost feel bad if I stop posting, and that sounds so stupid for me to say. I am sure nobody would even care. It shouldn’t seem like this big deal for me to delete my social media apps. So why haven’t I yet? Why can’t I bring myself to do this? I know the harm social media is doing to my mind and I know the benefits of completing a detox would bring me. By turning to social media we are missing important chemical reactions that come with real-life human interactions, from putting ourselves out there and experiencing the world. Social media, while it seems easy to use does not replace this. While I have been working on limiting my screen time, I still average around 3 hours a day. That comes to 21 hours a week, 1,092 hours in a year. On this track I would spend 45 days a year on social media. That. Is. Wrong. It is time for us to wake up.
I know that I am putting myself on a career path that would lead me to use social media and I do believe that is okay as long as I find a balance. A healthy way that I can use social media as an important platform while also allowing myself to fill my day with things besides mindlessly looking at my phone. I do want to try to delete my apps for thirty days to see where it would take me. One of the founders of Yes Theory, a youtube channel that encourages people to step out of their comfort zones, posted a really inspiring video about it. I will link it down below because it’s a must watch. He leads a career that requires him to be on social media but wanted to challenge himself. He talks about how he was struggling with anxiety and couldn’t focus due to a large amount of time he spends on social media. He gave himself thirty days to detox and talked about the positive experience he had. He now is working on finding a healthy balance with his work on social media. What he was feeling before deleting his social media apps is what I have been feeling as well. I feel like I am in this limbo of being over social media but also so use to being on it. It’s not giving me anything in return anymore. It’s just a filler. So maybe it’s time for me to face my fear and just go for it. It’s going to be terrifying but I think the reward could be so worth it. I want to find a way to learn that yes, I can use social media for a platform that has a purpose that isn’t just to look at pictures.
Something sad that I have seen is pictures of parents with their children reading books on subways going viral. It’s sad because people are saying that’s how children should be raised, not just handed an iPad or iPhone to keep quiet. The significance of that is that it shows how much our world has been changed in the matter of such of a short time since the invention of smartphones. You stand out for doing something other than just being on your phone. The new norm for society is to be looking at your phone. I am guilty of doing this, reaching for your phone to keep busy or even to look busy. We use our phones to escape whatever situation we are in, if it’s a long commute, waiting for someone, to just avoid strangers. I was a huge book reader growing up. That was my form of escape. While I still read books, I have found myself reading less, going months without reading. It’s hard to imagine my life before social media. How did I manage my time? What did I do in my spare time? Now, I want to know what would I do without social media. I know that there are a million things I would love to do. I have projects I want to start, coloring books I want to finish, a book that is begging for an ending, and a blog I want to see bloom. It is so much easier to distract yourself on social media when things get hard or when you want to avoid this mounting pile of work. It’s easy to access, to procrastinate on. I want to take back my life. This is my wake up call and I want this to be your wake up call as well.
Skye's Ambitions 