Social media is truly beginning to scare me. Yes, parents or adults, you are and have been completely correct since the beginning of it; social media is dangerous.

I’m not even talking about the endlessness of it, the unknown aspects of information and filing that goes into every post you’ve ever made. I’m talking about living, and the diminishment of true life because of the internet today.

The fact that people are so addicted to their phones and social media today is actually becoming nauseating. Now, on the one hand, I will admit that I use Instagram and Snapchat quite frequently, for example; you’re probably reading this just because I shared the link to it on social media. Therefore, it is out of the way; I do use social media quite often.

I try my hardest during important moments or intriguing moments of my life to just experience them, not to post them. If one person is so focused on taking a video of a moment with friend, or a moment at a concert, or anything else- truth is, he or she probably wasn’t really having fun in the first place. He or she was simply just looking for validation.

This is what it is today, is it not? You post a picture of an event, or a moment, or simply your face, and you hope for the best; for the likes to come rolling in so that sense of happiness and security can rush over yourself. Validation has replaced any notion of true happiness that any of us has truly known, and therefore, we search for it instead of just enjoying moments. When was the last time you felt truly happy, and truly invested in a moment, without feeling the need to pull out your camera and document it? Happiness hasn’t been around for a while, and social media is contributing to its disappearance.

So yes, this generation is built upon validation within social media and it is exactly why we aren’t living the lives to the extent that we could be. As well as that, it is the main ingredient that contributes to this long lasting aftertaste of complete self-loathing and insecurity. Behind the screen, let’s face it, everyone is insecure about something, and hoping for the likes to shoot up to a place they’ve never reached before, or honestly, just hoping for views to make us feel like we’re being seen...

And I’ve come to realize recently that being seen has nothing to do with the internet, but the people around you. I wonder sometimes how many potential friends I have passed in my life but then missed the opportunity because they or I had been rummaging through the depths of some fake social media platform.

I’m thinking of getting rid of whatever social media platform I possibly can, in hopes to gain a better view of the world, outside of my phone. In short, I hope that anyone who reads this, or anyone in general, might be able to come to a conclusion that true happiness can be found again outside of a screen.