A year ago, I deleted my Instagram, Twitter and most of my other social media accounts because I felt that they were taking up too much space in my brain and too much time in my day. The only social media accounts that I have left are the ones where I will be sharing my work or see as less problematic. Here are reasons why you should be mindful of how you spend your time on social media...

There is a constant and obsessive nature to compare yourself to others

It is not healthy to constantly want to be better than everyone that you see. You should have a healthy drive to want to better yourself, but not for your online profile or your followers... for YOURSELF. Forget your followers, forget your social media standing. You are a living, breathing human and you need to stop comparing yourself online. Understand the difference between competitive and obsessive.

It creates an unrealistic expectation of perfection

Life is guaranteed to give us all ups and downs. When you're looking at someone's Instagram or any other account, and they seem to have a perfect life, and never have a bad day, they are just trying to portray this idea to you ... and guess what?, You fell for it. Stop comparing your life to how other's look on the Internet because everyone wants to appear perfect, so they are going to consistently show you the great parts of their life, rather than the average or even the bad. Girls photoshop their images and blur their skin lines, ultimately, giving the world a photograph that resembles what they want to look like, not what they actually do. It is not healthy to create photographs like this and hold yourself to this fake standard or to envy other's photographs that appear this way.

You're not LIVING

Frankly, if your nose is in your phone all hours of the day you are not living your life. You're not observing your surroundings, building relationships, expanding your mind and challenging any of your thoughts. You are constantly using your same pointer finger to scroll through channels of people who took way too much time to edit their photos and come up with lame captions, only to get approval from you.

Is it just me, or once you hear it out loud it's truly disturbing?

Also, it is extremely rude to be on your phone if someone is trying to have a conversation and connect with you.

We define ourselves by likes and crave other's acceptance

You are wasting so much time sitting by your phone and checking the number of likes that you get when you could be doing something productive. Stop zooming in on your pictures and checking for impurities. More importantly, stop zooming in on other user's pictures. Let's all be less judgemental and understand that nobody cares if your skin isn't flawless or anything else you are obsessing over. If you are happy with the way that you look, who truly cares what anyone else thinks.

If you're a social media lover, I am not here to try to stop you.

Just please, understand that Instagram is not real, and working on your actual self, pays off more than your follower count does.