Does anyone remember the days when you would make plans with friends and just enjoy each other's company? No snapchats to document every single moment. No Instagram to upload photos to. Taking pictures solely to have as a memory, not because you want to receive likes and retweets. Just pure fun with the ones you care about.
With social media, those times are long gone and it makes me sad. It's 2016 and I can't help but to notice the changes that have been occurring in our social lives. With Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, these social media platforms are supposed to help keep in touch with friends and family. It does, to say the least but it also distracts us from physically keeping in touch with one another. Not only that, but people feed off of social media for the wrong things.
I don't know why, but there are people who base their worth off of how many followers they have; I hate it. Followers do not mean anything. They don't mean anything because it's not a reflection of who anyone is as a person. Just because someone has a huge amount of followers does not mean they are any better than anyone. And, let's be realistic here, no one has 1,000 friends in reality. I mean, does anyone really think that people with thousands of followers actually knows them all on a personal level? I hope not.
When I hang out with my friends, we sit in silence because we're constantly on our phones. Meaningful conversations are hard to come by because we're always paying attention to what's going on in the social media world.
Now, don't get me wrong. Social media is a great platform to make money and showcase talents. There are several businesses and people that have prospered because of social media. I think it's a smart way to get ahead in the game. It's when I see people come up with ways to gain followers in order to seem cool or popular is what bothers me. In no way should it be like that. I never understood why Instagram or Twitter could be something people cared so much about.
Let's not forget that because of social media, real relationships are hard to come by. Girls get mad at their boyfriends because they like other girls pictures. There's always that urgency to check your boyfriend or girlfriend's phone to see who might be in their dm's. Then the pressure of posting a picture of the boyfriend or girlfriend. It's hard to say "just because he/she doesn't post you, does not mean you're being cheated on." I've seen it happen too many times. People purposely not posting who they're dating because they're involved with other people. It's just too much and it should not be like this.
Social media has drastically changed this generation in more ways than one. I hope for the days where social media dies and it's not something that consumes our lives. There's so much more to life than retweets, likes and followers.
