I would like to start by saying that this is just a personal rant of mine. I believe social media is toxic to a good amount of relationships and if you don’t think so, that’s fine. If you do, thanks for reading and please share!

Now don’t get me wrong, I love social media. I get on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at least twice a day, if not more. I enjoy posting things and seeing what other people post. And I truly believe that if we all handled it the right way, it wouldn’t ruin relationships.

The problem is that guys and girls like to snoop. I’m guilty of it too! You just go to look at the Instagram account of the guy you like and suddenly you’re on his sister’s best friend’s mom’s page. It happens. Should it? Definitely not. But we’re all just curious about the people we like and with so much information at our fingertips, how could we not look at it?

Here’s the thing - when you post something online, it’s there forever. Just because you delete it does not mean that it’s gone. People take screenshots, people send the link to their friends, etc. Once you put something online, it will always be there. You can’t take things back once you hit that send button.

It’s so easy to get caught up in who liked what, who retweeted what, what that tweet meant, and what the real meaning behind that caption on that Instagram post was. The thing is, it shouldn’t mean anything! Just because I favorite a tweet of someone’s doesn’t mean I’m “sending them a message” or trying to tell them something. I probably just relate to what they said or think it’s funny.

I’ve watched friends of mine get so caught up in the world of social media that they actually get upset if they don’t get a certain amount of likes or favorites. I’m not saying I’m not guilty of it. I’m just saying it’s ridiculous.

I believe a healthy relationship is one where you can communicate easily with each other and talk about things that actually matter face to face. Text messages are not the place for a hard conversation. There’s no way to know the tone of their voice or see their facial expression as they send a text. Messages can be easily misread and over analyzed and it can destroy some relationships.

I’ve been in a long distance relationship where all we did was text and I can tell you from experience, it doesn’t work. You need face time. You need to talk on the phone. You need to hear each other’s voice.

And long distance isn’t the problem. It’s the constant checking of their Facebook to see if they’ve updated their status or posted a pic on Instagram or uploaded a video to their Snapchat story. There is no such thing as privacy anymore.

We need to get off of our phones and have an actual conversation with the people we care about. Social media should not be the only interaction we have with people.

Sit down with the people you love and care about and have a real conversation. Don’t text people when you miss them. Call them and talk to them or go see them. Put down your phone and be real.