Social media plays a huge role in our lives every single day. We constantly check our emails (probably not reading all 4000 unread messages in our inbox), we refresh our Twitter feed countless times during the day as well as Facebook and Instagram. We send people pointless Snapchats of ourselves in class with the generic caption of "bored" or adding things to our Snapchat story that consists of people drinking at a frat party or a picture of a sunset from their so-called "perfect vacay."
Lately, on my own social media accounts, people have been posting things just for the sole purpose of getting the needed attention or acceptance through their "followers," whether these pictures were of a group of girls on spring break in their bikinis or a selfie that was clearly edited way too much. I have always been annoyed with these types of posts, but recently, something about them sent me over the edge, so I decided to give up social media for one week. I had no idea what to expect from this experience and if I would even last for more than one day without looking at my accounts, but I did it, and here's what happened:
1. My skin cleared up
2. I noticed how many people use their phones while having a face-to-face conversation with people (and I realized how rude that actually looks)
3. I learned that meaningful moments are so much better when you truly experience it, rather than trying to get the perfect picture to post later online
4. There are way better things I can be doing with my time than checking social media multiple times an hour
5. I felt less stressed than I usually do during the school week
6. My sleep pattern changed (whether this was related to no social media or the change of coming back to school after spring break I will never know, but I thought this was interesting)
7. I actually looked around and felt more a part of my society while walking to my classes because I wasn't looking at my phone the whole time
8. I didn't think about going on social media as much as I thought I would
9. I didn't feel like I was missing anything that people were posting online
10. Most importantly, I felt way happier.
After the week without social media was over, I honestly can say something changed. Before last week, I used to check Facebook more than three times a day, as well as all of my other social media, and I can't understand why I did that. I treated social media like I do when I look in the refrigerator: I keep opening and closing the door hoping new food will appear and be better than what is in there currently. I refreshed all of my accounts so many times hoping new things would appear to look at, and of course nothing ever did.
People are so obsessed with posting pictures and writing statuses that have no value to them just for the sake of posting something online. Whenever I look at Instagram, all of the comments on pictures are the same. Either it's the heart-eyed emoji or "OMG you're so pretty" (most of the time the wrong "your" is used, which drives me crazy, but that's a whole other issue). These comments mean absolutely nothing and I think Instagram posts nowadays are just for these dumb responses, which is a very sad thing. I also think that people rely on how many likes they get on what they post as a status symbol. I just want to scream in people's face and say, "None of it matters!" As I start to fully understand this now, I wonder why I have social media if all of this stuff bothers me so much. But then I realized that I actually post meaningful things that my friends enjoy, and to me, that's way more important than getting likes on a selfie.
So maybe as a society we are using social media for the wrong reasons. I think we sometimes forget that social media helps us connect with people that are far away from us. I think it's a beautiful thing that I'm able to go on Facebook and feel connected with people that I don't have the opportunity of seeing every single day anymore, but social media helps me feel like I do.
We should all try and use less social media during the day, because once you do, the difference between an irrelevant post and a meaningful one becomes clearer.
