Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter....Social media. It's basically the only form of communication these days. You have your "handle" or your display name, a profile picture or "avatar", and typically a "bio" or a short sentence or two describing yourself. You have followers, you get likes, people comment on your stuff...that's social media. Now, there are different types of social media. Instagram is where you post pictures and people can either like or comment on it. Twitter is where you can post 140 characters of basically whatever you want. Snapchat is where you can send someone a picture of anything for a certain amount of seconds with fun filters or geotags but there's a catch, each Snapchat is "gone forever" after the time expires. Facebook is where you can see people's timelines of their life, updates, pictures, and you can also send people personal messages along with posting on their wall.

Don't get me wrong social media is a great thing and personally with moving from state to state, it has helped me keep in touch with the people I grew up with and all of my friends back in California but, I've come to realize that it is just too much and I needed a break.

In my opinion it is just a way to keep up with your image and for people you either know very well or barely know at all can see what you are up to. You may be thinking about all the ways you can set your profile to private or limit the people who follow you but it just got to the point where I was tired of posting my life for everyone to see.

I got tired of hundreds of people seeing what I was doing with my life through my social media. I know that sounds conceited and somewhat stuck up but there are fourteen hundred people that follow me on Instagram and there are more than three hundred and fifty people who view my Snapchat stories. Like...what. I'm eighteen years old and I'm pretty sure I haven't even came in contact with that many people in my lifetime. That's a lie. Well, sort of. I mean the majority of those people are family, friends from both California and Alabama, friends from primary and secondary school and then lastly my friends I've met in college. But would all of those people really want to know what I'm doing with my life? Probably not.

I would only post pictures of me being happy and having fun and that's all what people saw. Which was all people thought. And if we're being honest here, I'm not always happy. I have mental and emotional breakdowns at least twice a week. School is stressful and life is hard sometimes. But I would never post that on to anywhere near social media. I also was obsessed with getting as many likes as possible, which was crazy. I spent too much time on cute captions and what picture I should take and edit next when I had other things to be doing like...um my homework??? I honestly do not know what drove me to be to plugged into all of my accounts but it had to stop. It was consuming most of my time and I would check it at least once an hour. What made me want to know what my friends were doing all the time? I do not know, but it took over and I could probably say I was obsessed and addicted to social media.

So I did the unthinkable in this day and age and I deleted it. Well I deleted the apps off my phone. For a week and a half. Yeah, that's weak, but it was hard to quit cold turkey. I kept Facebook for sorority reasons and occasionally downloaded Instagram back so I could post for work but for the most part I was disconnected from the world unless I like ya know walked outside or got a notification for our chapter Facebook page. I had a legitimate routine of checking my social media hourly and then suddenly it wasn't there anymore. So I figured I had to do other things.

I read the news, I looked at my photo album over and over again, and I observed the world around me. I became a people watcher and became more aware of my surroundings. All of that happened because I did not have a phone in my hand 24/7. I wasn't consumed with watching everyone's life through a glass screen anymore and realized there were other ways I could live mine without keeping up with what everyone else was doing down to the hour, minute, and location.

The thing with social media is that everyone is watching you. Always. Even if you posed it two years ago, someone can always stalk you that far back and find what you were like in middle school and potentially use it to blackmail you. Okay, that was far, but it's true!! Also, future employers WILL look at your social media to see if you're a good candidate for their position so you have to be extra cautious with what you're posting or what others are tagging you in.

In the midst of my hiatus from what had been consuming my time the most, I realized I missed it. Hahahahhahahahahahhaaa. What? I. Missed. It. The fear of missing out started to kick in, given it was spring break, and I've missed seeing what my friends have been up to. I may have just went through a phase where I was just lazy with taking pictures and editing them to post, but week and a half was long enough (LOL). I did realize that it social media could be dangerous if used unwisely and that all things are good in moderation and that this week and a half was good for me, but I'm glad to be back to enjoy all the positives of social media, so @cbraaad...come at it.