I, like most American teenagers, am addicted to social media. The amount of time I have spent on it is scary. I used to mindlessly scroll through my Instagram feed for hours, wasting time that I could have used to study, work out, or improve myself as a human being. This past summer, I did the unthinkable, I deleted all of my social media. It was amazing. I had never felt that liberated, all from deleting a few apps. Here's my take on how deleting social media from your phone helps you improve your life.
As I said, I was low key obsessed with social media. Who wasn't? As school ended, who were you if you weren't Instagraming you summer adventures or your graduation pictures? I would scroll through my Facebook, looking at literally nothing. As much as I loved the mindless task of looking through my feeds, and seeing what everyone else was doing, I realized it actually made me feel empty. As much as I liked getting notifications that people were liking my photos, I came to the conclusion that this was a false sense of joy. Our Instagram photos are not really who we are, they are bits and pieces of us, filtered and with some stupid caption. People liking my photos made me realize that I was justifying my self worth through others double clicking a dumb photo. I knew it was time to say goodbye to putting up a facade of happiness and success to impress others. I realized the only person I needed to impress was me.
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My worst addiction was Snapchat. Me and one of my best friends had over a 100-day streak on Snapchat, and I had many other streaks that were over 20 days long. This was one of the turning points for me. I realized that I was basing my value of my friendships on how many days in a row I had Snapchatted someone. This is the stupidest thing ever. I am your friend because I am there to talk to you when you need me, because we make each other laugh, and because we can spend every moment together. Not because we have a snapchat streak.
Now more on the side of time wasting, Twitter and Vine just had to go. I did not even realize how much time would go by as I watched vines. Also, people take vine way to seriously, all for six seconds of fame and some revines? No, thanks. Twitter was bad, too. Half the time, I did not even know what people's tweets meant. Yes, Twitter can be good for things like news and sports, but it also leads to the soul sucking mindless scroll.
I don't even want to think about all the things I could have done while I was on social media. The amount of time I wasted was scary. Once school started again this fall, I downloaded all my apps. I fell back into the routine of checking my phone every two minutes to see who had Snapped me, or who was going on a Twitter rant. Then a few weeks ago, I broke down and ditched all of my social media apps. I said bye to Snapchat, Twitter, Vine and Instagram in an attempt to better myself.
Let me tell you, it is so worth it. I sleep more because I am not laying in bed, staring at a screen till god knows when in the morning, which doesn't let my body release it's natural melatonin. I actually talk to peoples faces, not their profiles. I don't find my self-worth in whether someone liked my photo or not. I am doing better in school because my phone does not buzz all the time, stealing my attention from my real work. I am happier because I am not wasting so much of my life staring at a little screen. I read so much more because I am not looking at pictures, but actually finding articles that make me a smarter person once I read them.
It was easy for me, and I know you can do it too. Before you know it, you will not even realize that you do not have your social media apps on you phone. I understand that it may be hard for a college student to just quit Facebook, because of all the groups and important information we need from our school, teammates and other club members. My suggestion is just to cut back on Facebook on the computer, and when you are on, read great articles (like this one).
