I'm a digital marketing major, I'm surrounded with social media all day, every day and although I think it's great for marketing and advertising businesses, it's terrible for our personal life. Why? Well look around. That's right we don't look around because our eyes are glued to the device held between our hands. We never look up.
When was the last time you had a deep conversation with someone? When was the last time you put your phone away for more than an hour without checking it at all? What about the last time you did something without your phone? It's been a while huh? We always have to take pictures of our food and post it on snapchat, and post artsy pictures of our trip so others can see them and like them. (I admit I take pictures of everything but that's cause photography is one of my passions) As soon as we post that picture we keep checking who liked our photo over and over again. It's been an hour and there's only 50 likes on the picture. Did I post it on a "bad time"? Is it not good enough? That cute guy from my bio class didn't like it. So it gets deleted. We spend a good 30 minutes trying to take that perfect selfie to post. Why don't we like any of the 500 plus shots? That's right because we're comparing ourselves to others on social media. The ones with the perfect body, perfect skin, perfect stomach, perfect legs, perfect hair and we need a good selfie so we can impress the guy or girl we like.
We go over our grandparents house and when we leave it feels like we weren't even there. We were there physically, but not mentally. We were too focused scrolling through our Facebook and Instagram feeds, instead of enjoying the moment with our 70 years old grandparents. We have time to like, tweet, share and text but we don't have time to pick up the phone, call our loved ones and just talk to them.
Social media lowers your confidence so much, and it's truly so sad. You're scrolling through your feed seeing everyone traveling, eating at cool places, couples being cute and lovey dovey, people cuddling with their dogs....believe it or not studies show that social media causes major depression and anxiety because all we do is compare our lives to others. The thing with social media though, we can all make it seem that our lives are perfect, but what's behind that?
All these social media apps allow us to create a profile to show others how great our life is, but in reality do you feel as happy as your Instagram page looks? Think about it.
You like a guy and he might like you back because you matched on Tinder and you keep liking each others photos on Instagram, yet neither of you reached out to each other. It's literally a game. We are not 10. We are young adults in college. Stop DMing and just communicate in person. Yes, you read that right; talk in person. You run into each other in person and don't say a word, yet as soon as you lose sight of one another you continue your texting. God gave us a tongue so we can speak, so use it.
We are so focused on how many followers we have, how many likes we get, and who likes our statuses and photos. Isn't that sad? Life is so much more than technology and social media. Focus on working hard in school and your job for a great future. Spend more time with your loved ones. Spend time doing a hobby. Stop wasting time online, and start living it. Put your damn phone away, don't tweet everything that's happening in your life and who cares how many likes you get on your Instagram photo? After all you're posting it for you and no one else right? Trust me I'm the same way. I'm on my phone a lot, but one of my new years resolutions is to be on it less, so each day I try to spend less time on it, especially on social media.
Enjoy the moment every day, all the time. Wether you're traveling, hanging out with a friend or you're over your grandparents for dinner, put your phone away and enjoy the moment.Don't allow social media to take over your time. Time is precious and life is short. Do something fun that one day you'll look back to and say, "I can't believe i did that!" If we're always on our phones, we'll never have moments like that to look back to.