A bubble, powerful yet so weak. When created it seems it is the almighty. Tightly wound together. Consumes the tiny world that it beholds. But what happens when it pops?
A bubble. Broken with just a simple touch. Now the world that once was inside the bubble is no longer contained. Free at last from captivity and able to thrive in the real world.
Freedom, exemption from external control, interference, and regulation.
Captivity, the state or period of being held, imprisoned, enslaved, or confined.
Which life would you choose? One inside the bubble, constantly confined from the rest of humanity. Or outside the bubble, where no boundaries are drawn, no confinement of what you can and cannot do.
For many years now the world has been mesmerized by social media. The ways it can connect you with people without having to interact face to face is phenomenal. Social media has been able to keep me in touch with so many friends whom I would no longer see. After living in Singapore for a year, and making lots of new friends I am so grateful for Facebook and iIstagram. I love how I can stay in contact and know what they’re up to, as well as them being able to stay in contact with me. I do realize there are many reasons why social media has done us wonders but I’d also like to recognize a very big issue with it.
No I’m not here to talk about how sad it is that people no longer talk face to face, or how we should value a handwritten letter. I’m here to talk about a bigger issue. The psychological effects of social media.
Starting my sophomore year of high school I started having anxiety over posting things on social media. It seemed that there was so much pressure on how many likes you got on your Instagram or Facebook profile picture. As if a number of likes you got determined if you were cool or not.
All the sudden posting on Instagram became a competition. There was even a strategy to Instagramming:
10 stages of posting an Instagram
Step 1: Find a picture you look good in
Step 2: Find the appropriate effect
Step 3: Come up with a good caption
Step 4: Make sure it’s a good time to post
Step 5: Post the picture
Step 6: Incessantly refresh the page to watch the likes come in
Step 7: Text your friends to tell them to like it if you’re running low on likes
Step 8: See how many likes you have in that amount of time
Step 9: Frantically worry because you only have 24 likes in 23 minutes
Step 10: Finally stop worrying about a stupid post and move on with your life
This is the 10 step anxiety provoking system that every teenage girl goes through. Some of you may be reading this and thinking, “I don’t go through that, I don’t care how many likes I get.” Nice try, maybe you don’t anymore but there was once a day when Instagram, or some sort of social media, seemed to control your life.
Social media puts people inside a bubble. A Community of people who believe that their social status is based on their social media profiles. As I said before, a bubble can be easily broken.
During my senior year I realized that social media was destroying me. I’d get upset when I watched my stories and saw that people were hanging out meanwhile I was at home. I’d be embarrassed to snapchat my friends when I was at home because I was afraid they’d think I was a loser. I would get upset because my Instagram didn’t get as many likes as others did.
That’s when I decided to challenge myself. I was going to delete all the social media apps from my phone. I would no longer know what dumb party was going on because I couldn’t check snapchat. I wouldn’t know that a group of girls went to some stereotypical restaurant in the city because I couldn’t check Instagram. I would soon lose all my 300-day snap streaks.
But that was alright. Because when you look at the big picture social media is just an alternate world. An alternate world that depicts a person for who they aren’t. It can show the absolute best sides of people or the absolute worse. Never will it capture the person for who they really are.
After deleting my social media I was once again mentally stable. I became confident, naive, innocent, and most of all happy. I could no longer be judged for who I was online, whether it be a good judgement or a bad. People didn’t know what I was up to. If they truly wanted to know they could text me and ask me what I’m doing. But do you know what? Unless someone wanted to hangout with me, nobody texted me saying “hey what are you doing, I’m really interested to hear about your day.” And do you know why that is? Because no one cares. Now that doesn’t mean that no one cares about me, just they don’t care to know what I’m doing at every second of the day. So what was all the panicking about posting things on social media if no one truly cares? Why do I even use social media if no one cares? Social media was created to help old friends stay in touch. Not to post every second of your life, because to be quite honest no one cares.
With that being said I encourage you all to try deleting your social media apps off your phone for at least 24hrs. Experience what it is like to be completely and totally disconnected from others. Not only do you not make harsh false judgements about others, but no one makes them about you. Yes there may be something funny that your friend does that you wish you could put on your snapchat story. But in reality that moment was only funny for you. So save that video of your friend, but keep that memory for yourself. Don’t make it a memory that could have been special if it was just you viewing it, but instead is a memory that everyone will keep in their heads and think of you as how that one video depicted you.
Currently I do use social media and I do have it on my phone, but after experiencing a life without it I am now able to see the world outside. I no longer have anxiety over social media.
So if you are like I once was and gets too wrapped up in what others are doing and think poorly of yourself because you’re not doing something fun like others, then delete the apps for a bit. Why keep the cause of the pain when the pain can be so easily taken away.
