*DING DING DING* goes your alarm clock, ready to wake up and start the day! Whats the first thing on your list? Shower? Breakfast? Maybe a nice run? Except wait... Don't forget to check your social media to start the day! That's right, we are all (even me) guilty of gluing our eyes to our phones first thing in the morning. It is almost like this big rush of dopamine rushes through us of excitement that we have to check all of our messages, latest tweets, new Instagram posts, scroll through Facebook for just "a few minutes."
It has become a daily routine in our lives to constantly have our phone to access our social media daily, and here are 8 major reasons why social media has ruined us as humans.
1. Wasting Time
The amount of time we spend checking our Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc... Just think about it for a second. Those few minutes add to hours on end daily. Think about every time you go out to dinner or are watching a movie, and during that time how often do you check your phone? It is almost as if we have no idea what to do in spare time besides check our social media.
2. Becoming "Perfect"
How many articles/advertisements/pictures do you see scrolling through your feed about "how to get your dream body in # days" or "here is the trick to getting flawless skin." There is an unending amount of products and companies that promote what the perfect person should look like or convince us how we need to look to be beautiful, I mean think about how wrong that is... If you don't have a Kim K booty, Kylie Jenner lips, rock hard abs, and look like Beyoncé or Channing Tatum, you're pretty much as social media portrays as "ugly."
3. Happiness lies within social media
We constantly look for the validation of others while using social media. Instead of actually enjoying hanging with your friends or family, or enjoying a nice meal, we feel the need to post about it and if we don't get 100 and some likes on the photo of our trip to the zoo, it automatically makes it less satisfying. So much so that we even feel the need to delete our selfies if we don't get a certain number off likes because it may portal us as "uncool"
4. Privacy = Off
There is an unending amount of posts I've seen about peoples lives, and not just what they're having for dinner, but they go as far as sharing there medical problems or major family issues. One thing leads to another and suddenly that Facebook post about some friend being fake has 87 comments of people arguing back and forth out in the open for people to see. Since when did we share pictures of ourselves in bras and underwear? What happened to living life for you and not for the world to see?
5. Virtual Reality
You've probably all seen the Tv show Catfish and wondered if that actually happens to people and the truth is it, we do it every day ourselves to an extent. Sure it is true that we don't pretend to be a completely different person to others, but we befriend people we've never even seen before and end up considering them our friends or someone we are interested in dating just by messaging a few conversations back and forth. We definitely shouldn't be considering people our friends just because on their birthdays they post on your timeline or favorite their Instagram posts or vice versa.
6. Social Media Knows Everything
There are hundreds of articles we see weekly on social media sites about politics, health remedies, life of celebrities, you name it and it's out there. The worst part about social media is that ANYONE can create an article or video to convince others to believe what they want them to. People go as far as to photoshop pictures to convince others that this person has cellulite, or the president of the U.S.A. flipped someone the bird. People can literally create and write anything to infuriate people and get others to board their train of thoughts, even if its 100% BS.
7. It is Hurtful
So you saw that your boyfriend liked that one girl's pic on Instagram, and now you're questioning his loyalty. Soon enough it turns into a long argument and trust issues. Maybe you find yourself blocking or "hiding" people from your feed because the things they post are hurtful or insulting. It lowers our self-esteem because maybe that one girl has longer hair and is thinner and you wonder if that's why the guy you like is hanging out with her and posting snap chats with her, and not you. You find yourself needing to only post the best selfies that maybe it took you 32 times to get one just to impress one person or get more likes.
8. It controls Us
#TBT! Hey guys its Thursday that means I can finally post that cute throwback I've been waiting for... Seriously? Since when if we want to post an old photo, who made the rule we have to wait until Thursday? Social media has taught us to follow trends or it shows that maybe we aren't doing things correctly. People use the latest lingo like "bae" or that was "LIT" to describe things because that's what the trend is. We even avoid places that don't have Wifi because that means less time checking our phones.
I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to let go of living in a world of social media, and sure I love to share things with people, and it is a great way to stay in touch, but no more will I keep going as far as to post every meal I eat on Snapchat, or delete a photo I personally like because it got 50 less likes than I hoped for. As Prince Ea stated in one of his videos about social media, "call me crazy but I imagine a world where we smile when we have low batteries, because that will mean we are one step closer to humanity."
