This is something that my friend and I started doing last year: a social media cleanse. Sometimes in the world we live in, you can just get so consumed with other peoples’ lives and their opinions of you. Social media is largely to blame for that. When I begin to feel it consuming me, I get rid of it. You don’t have to go all out and delete your accounts or anything but just delete all the apps off your phone. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, (I know right?! Unbearable). But seriously I encourage you all to try it. Whether it’s just for the day, or a week, or a month! However long you see fit. It is a great way to detach yourself from the broad world we live in and reattach with yourself.

Beyond just getting out of the social media bubble, sometimes there is one person’s life in particular that you need to be less distracted by. An ex and his new girl perhaps? Sometimes losing that full access to their life is the extra push you need to just get over it!

Not to mention how weird of a concept social media truly is. Think about it, by clicking a few buttons you can know exactly where someone is, what they are doing, and who they are with. It’s sickening to think how easy it is to get all the information you want, and then some you don’t. What’s worse is how we let others do it to us as well! We drop our pins on Facebook telling the world where we are and then tag our friends who are joining us. Snapchat stories have become a place for play by plays of everyone’s lives.

Why do we, as a culture, find it necessary to update all our “friends” on what we’re doing? Why do we think that anyone cares? Why do we care about their lives so damn much?!

I mean honestly, everybody, delete your apps for a few days and just observe. Begin to look at all the people around you with their phone so close to their face that they’ve gone cross-eyed. Without your social media, you start to feel a little left out of dinner table conversations. That’s because the only thing anyone talks about these days is someone else’s business.

Don’t get me wrong, I am also part of the problem. I delete my apps for a short cleanse but I always bring them back in the end. I hate that I care about how many likes I get on Instagram and who viewed my story on Snapchat, but truthfully I do. I am part of the problem as are almost all my peers. But I think the fact that I can acknowledge it to be a problem is something that separates me from a few of the others.

Not everyone agrees with me. People say things like “this is the evolution of technology” and “we need to change with the times” and although these statements may be true, they cannot cover the fact that there is a social media issue. It is useful for things like relaying news and communicating with friends. But it has evolved into something else and that’s where the problem comes in. It is now a way to see what people are doing and who is doing who and other dirty secrets that we dig and dig to discover. Realize the problem people! I’m not saying we can fix it but one by one, at least try to remove yourself from it.