Walking to class, you scroll through Facebook. Waiting in line, you flick through Twitter. Waking up, you study your Instagram. Social media: it is quickly and subconsciously becoming one of the most natural actions in today's society, becoming almost as reflexive as cracking your knuckles or scratching an itch. Though, at the end of the day, can you honestly look back and say your day has been improved, your life added to, thanks to social media?
It is questions like this that truly make me question my enjoyment of social media and just how much of a place it has in my life. Just tonight, while at dinner with four of my good friends, I took a moment and paused. All five of us were on our phones. All of us were absorbed in a world that in reality has the smallest effect on our actual lives. This minimal impact on our lives stands in stark contrast to the fact that we check our phones on an average of one hundred and ten times a day. To sit back and reflect on such a number is staggering, (that's roughly once every eight minutes, given the average person is awake for sixteen hours a day).
It is not only the quantity of social media we take in, but the quality that often makes me wish we were in a world where social media was not a thing. I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen something on Facebook that genuinely made me think, or challenged my current opinions. Whenever I browse Twitter or Instagram, I can honestly say that I really feel no more caught up or in touch with my friends than before I unlocked my phone, (though I do have a clear mental image of what their lunch looked like, because that matters?). Social media is one of the most hollow forms of entertainment out there, giving you excessive amounts of information when in reality you minimally benefit from it.
Perhaps I'm just becoming a nineteen-year-old going on ninety, but to me, social media really is a thing of novelty. Seeing your friend's lives and reading their constant thoughts is interesting and worthwhile for only so long. After a while, you step back and realize just how much a face-to-face conversation means, how nice it is to hear from your mom on the phone, rather than in a blue text bubble.
Personally, few things make my day like receiving a hand written letter from my grandma, a woman who has truly mastered the art of enjoying life and enjoying the little things. Social media has come into my life and has more than worn out it's welcome - it's just not for me. For millions around the world, however, social media will continue to move forward, ever tightening the virtual ties between peoples' lives.
