What’s the first thing most of us do when we first open our eyes in the morning? Some of you will reach for your phone and some of you will start the day like normal human beings should — by breathing. I found myself being dragged into this robotic routine of checking how many people had seen my story on Snapchat and how many likes my picture had rounded up throughout the wee hours of the night. I found myself unable to focus at times because I was thinking about what my next snap would be or reminding myself to keep up with the streaks I had with some of my friends. I soon realized how unhealthy this was and how much it was affecting my daily life. Social media can definitely be positive thing, but unfortunately for me, it had turned into a negative thing.
Every chance I got, I would check Snapchat or Twitter out of habit. I didn’t even have to get a notification from someone to open the app. I reached a point where I didn’t find it enjoyable anymore and I finally realized it was time to take a break. I deleted Snapchat and Twitter and immediately felt a weight off my shoulders. It felt so nice to not be expecting notifications and to not feel the need to document every second of my day for people who, quite frankly, don’t care. The main reason why I took a hiatus from the social media platforms that were taking up the most of my time was because I felt that social media had become something for the public and reflected less of myself.
The need to keep up an image and put up a façade is something that has plagued many of us in this age of social media and sharing. I found myself trying to cater to an audience instead of catering to myself and that is where the problem arose. A lot of people have been asking me with exclamation marks and question marks why I “quit” Snapchat and Twitter and once I explain to them my reasoning, they tend to take a step back and always come to the conclusion, “yeah that is a good idea, I should do the same.”
What implications come along with social media and how we use it? What does social media allow us to do that human interaction doesn’t? It allows us to dive into someone’s life and do something all of us are guilty of: judging. After high school and throughout college, I found myself deleting and unfollowing people little by little as they became less relevant to me and my growth as a person. One may argue that social media allows us to filter out the negative and irrelevant from our feeds, but my concern deals less with the clutter and more with how preoccupied we become with our profiles and how the world sees us. This phenomenon isn’t far from real life in the sense that we tend to alter our appearances to satisfy and cater to a certain public, but I feel it is heightened on social media. There are so many ways one can alter and filter a photo to present their followers with a perspective that may be far from reality. My concern with the obsession with social media that many of us have is we lose ourselves in the filters and 24-hour stories.
The realization must come from within and one must be introspective enough to realize when social media begins to affect them in a negative way. As I mentioned earlier in the article, my realization came because I caught myself wasting time. Something else that triggered this realization was the daunting stack of books in the corner of my room I left unread. Looking at them, I couldn’t help but think of all the time I wasted fabricating this 'reality' online when I could have been enriching myself through reading or really any other activity. One of my favorite YouTubers and filmmakers is Casey Neistat. Casey created an app called Beme. Beme is a social media platform similar to Snapchat - except the screen goes black when you’re filming and once you’re finished recording, the app automatically posts the video without allowing you to place filters or to edit the video. This concept caught my attention because that is exactly what social media is lacking: raw material.
My aim with all of this was exclusively to netter my personal life, and it still is, but when thinking about what to write for this week’s article, I found it appropriate. I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t get too caught up in the stories, both Instagram and Snapchat, and don’t get too caught up in what you see. There is so much to be seen in this world and within ourselves and while social media has allowed us to see more of the world without leaving the comfort of our beds, it has also narrowed our minds to immediately believe what we see and fail to look past the photos and filters. There are two sayings I have learned to value and execute in my daily life: everything is good in moderation and there’s always more than what meets the eye.
