It’s easy to lose hours of your time on Pinterest without even realizing it. You’re pinning away recipes, craft ideas and inspiration for your future wedding -- even though you’re nowhere near that stage of your life. You organize your boards perfectly and have one for almost everything. You probably even have a board for your future kids, even though you’re still a kid yourself.
What’s strange about planning your life perfectly on Pinterest is that you’re going to have another person come into your life, and what if they hate all these things you’ve planned and fallen in love with? What if these dreamy boards you’ve wasted hours pinning to are hideous to your future spouse? What if your future kiddo board is flooded with pinks and purples and all you have is boys?
Life is never going to be something you can plan out. It throws you curveballs and, more often than not, takes turns you never imagined. Plans never go as they were meant to, so sometimes it’s pointless to make them.
Pinterest is great for things like recipes and crafts, but can we all please stop planning our future weddings and children that are so far off? If you’re engaged then plan away, but include your spouse (and be warned, your Pinterest wedding might come off as extremely clichéd). If you’re expecting, then by all means look to Pinterest for tips and nursery décor ideas. The point is that when you reach these milestones in your life it’s OK to plan and look for tips on Pinterest, but when you’re in college or high school, planning your life on Pinterest isn’t something you should be doing.
Instead of spending so much time and effort on these plans at such a young age, you should be enjoying the moment. Put down the phone or laptop and enjoy what is going on around you. Actually listen to your professor's lecture for a change, go grab coffee with your friends (they won’t always be living in the same city as you), call your parents and chat with them, step out of your comfort zone and go to that social event you were invited to, do anything to enjoy the moments you're in now -- rather than planning and detailing a future that you’re not even promised.
Social media these days is robbing our generation of valuable memories and experiences, and Pinterest isn’t the only culprit. We waste our time behind the screens of computers, phones and tablets and forget to live in the moment. When something exciting happens, we're quick to pull out our phones to document it on Snapchat or take pictures instead of just soaking in and enjoying the experience. We’re being controlled by social media instead of the other way around.
It is so important to enjoy the moments you’re in when you’re in them. One day you’re not going to have access to all of this social media where you’ve planned or shown off your life. One day you’re only going to have your memories, and one day you might even lose those. So back away from the technology for a while and enjoy the life you’ve been given.
