I believe that the advent of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, is one of the greatest things that has been achieved in the past 10 years. They allow us to learn, grow, and stay connected to friends far away, and improve the world around us. But, sometimes, the negatives have the ability to outweigh the positives.
As I’m writing this, I’m currently on a bus to Tours, France and I have been without service and limited WiFi for a week. For the next four weeks, it will be mostly the same. This past week has been one of the best weeks of my life -- not because I got to climb the Eiffel Tower, dance with the band at Moulin Rouge, or bike through the Versailles Gardens, but because I got to experience it all without feeling the pressure to Snapchat or Tweet about it.
Yes, I have used Instagram three times, and posted some Snapchats when WiFi is available, but not as much as I would be if I were in America. Not being able to constantly document my life has made me incredibly happy.When my 25 new best friends and I were singing "Shake It Off" with the band on stage at Moulin Rouge, there were no phones in our hands trying to document it to show off what we were doing -- we were just having fun, laughing and singing; we were enjoying the moment.
Our generation is connected and that is awesome -- but there is a fine line between being connected and being addicted. Over the past two years in college, I have noticed more and more how much time we spend with other people, who are spending time with other people, on their IPhones.
When I am out to eat with a friend, I feel as if they are having more of a conversation with the people they are texting, than with me. It is a sign of the times -- if you didn’t Snapchat your Taco Mama dinner or Instagram your swap outfit for Thursday night did you really go out? But at what expense are we doing things for the views, likes, and favorites? The longer we allow ourselves to hide behind our phone and computer screens, the more we run the risk of losing innate human qualities -- the ones that connect us in real life.
You are what you think and see, so we also need to remember that the more time we spend on social media the more we subconsciously allow it to exert influence over our lives. Unfollowing someone on Twitter or Instagram doesn’t mean that we are unfollowing them in life.
As the owners of our accounts, we have the freedom to follow, like and post whatever we want -- that is what makes social media so beautiful. Social media is weird. It gives us the ability to connect to people whom we might not otherwise have ever met, and to keep in touch with them all the time. It almost gives us this sense of obligation to keep people just because we feel we should and creates a sort of bargaining chip -- she followed me, so I should automatically follow back; it’s the nice thing to do. But what are we to do when we feel the need to whittle our feed and see the things we want to see?
Your obituary is not going to include how many likes you got on one picture, or how many people follow you on Twitter, so we need to experience our lives without bowing to the pressure of constantly putting our best, one-dimensional views of our lives out for the world to see.
The only numbers future generations will remember you by will be eight digits on a tombstone, with one dash in between to represent everything in between. I don’t want to look back on my life and wish I had spent less time searching for the perfect filter, or wondering if someone’s Tweet was actually about me.
I once read that we struggle with insecurity because we compare our “behind the scenes” with everyone else’s highlight reel.
We need to stop living the filtered and edited lifestyle, put down our phones, and live in the moment.
