One second, beep. One minute, beep. One hour beep.
As soon as you hear that familiar beep you panic, your mind is attentive, and you frantically reach for your phone. You wonder what it could be or who it could be. Is it another like? Is it another comment? Or is it another retweet? You hold your breath in hopes of good news. You grasp the item next to you as you desperately and uncontrollably hold your phone in your right hand. When you finally lock eyes with the bright white screen, you are mad, you are disappointed, and you are sad to see that it’s nothing but just another notification of “This item cannot be backed up because there's not enough icloud storage. You can manage your storage in settings.” You chuck your phone onto the bed as you internally cry.
Now, how many of you have an Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, or even pinterest?
How many of you check those social media platforms almost every hour?
Social media is a rising trend in today's world of millenials. It has much more of an affect on you than you will ever know. Study by Mary Meeker shows that people touch their phones or check their phones hundred and fifty times a day and upload at least 1.8 billion pictures on facebook. Social Media awakens the curiosity in your mind if you don’t give it the attention it craves for more than an hour. You take care of it of day and night, you check up on it, and you even give it more attention than you give attention to you friends and family. It becomes your best friend. But what does it give you in return? What does it do for you in return? It gives you false hopes, it leads you to depression, it drifts away from your family and friends, it makes you lose yourself and who you truly are on the inside, and it creates a lack of vocabulary list.
With social media rapidly rising over the past decade, keeping in touch is no longer face to face but rather screen to screen. You make social media your number one priority. It’s the first thing you check in the morning and the last at night. You are obsessed with the concept of social media. You go out of your way to create the perfect instagram feed with the perfect filter and a percent caption. You even wait for the “right time” post your picture. After you post the picture, you constantly check for the amount of likes and comments you have received. But when you don't receive the amount of likes and comments you had hoped and wished for, you are saddened and disappointed.
Social media causes anxiety, it causes depression. It changes the way your brains function. You quickly delete the picture after it doesn't receive special amount of likes. Social media is affecting our brain, particularly its plasticity, which is the way the brain grows and changes after experiencing different things. You spiral down the staircase the social media black hole with no escape. You must force yourself to climb out of it. You must learn to limit the usage of social media.
There are four stressors that accompany social media. Highlight reel, social currency, FOMO, and online harassment. Highlight reel: presenting the highest points of happiness on social media. There are different levels of highlight reel. Everyone is at different level than you or the person sitting next to you. Steven Furtick once said, “We struggle with insecurity because we compare our behind the scenes with someone else’s highlight reel.” Level two: social currency. When the highlights do well and likes rocket through the roofs, you encounter the second stressor, social currency. Social currency is just like the dollar currency. It’s something you used to attribute to a value or good service. In social media, these likes, these comments have become the social currency in which you attribute value to something. You are the product of social media. You have taken down a picture if it didn’t get as many likes you would’ve wanted it to. You take your products down the shelf and walk back with shame. I’ll admit, I have done it too. You are so obsessed, you have biological responses that make us go crazy. Next comes FOMO (fear of missing out), FOMO is just a life phrase we just throw around like a football right? No, FOMO is an actual form of social anxiety. In a research done by collection of canadian universities, 7/10 people said they would get rid of social media if it meant for not being left out of the loop. Last comes online harassment, the worst of all. At least 40% of online adults have experienced online harassment. 73% have witnessed it, much more if being a woman, part of LGBTQ, muslim, I think you get the point. With social media comes it’s negative impacts.
But what do you really present on social media?
You present a “picture perfect” life, perfect parenting, amazing relationships, and you hardly ever give any bad news or a copy about yourself because that doesn’t make for a lot of likes. You take down pictures if it doesn’t get as many likes as you would have wanted it to. Social media gives you false hopes because of others “picture perfect” life. While creating this make believe life, you lose yourself, you lose your personality. You start to introduce yourself to strangers as your social media self. You forget who you are. You forget the value of yourself.
We have peeked to a level of which we have started to abbreviate words because our fingers simply cannot bring themselves to type out the whole word. Shortened texts such as, OMG: oh my god, LOL: laughing out loud, WTF: why the face. When you abbreviate your vocabulary you lose the nuances, subtleties and intimate parts of your personality and not being able fully express yourself and being able to communicate as you move forward. By doing this you lose a real connection and the butterfly feelings you get in your stomach because you’d rather text than talk to people in person or even on the phone.
How many times have you looked at your phone in horror when you receive a phone call?
Thousands of thoughts zoom through your mind. “Why is tiffany calling me? What does tiffany want? OMG…Tiffany no girl you gotta text me? This is giving me anxiety.” And then you wait until the very last ring, you debate whether you should pick it up or not, and then finally, “oh hey Tiffany, how’s it hanging?” And then you wait for the awkward silence while your inner self secretly but desperately beats you up.
You have let social media take charge of your life. You have let it become your best friend to only realize that it never gave you anything in return but anxiety. We act like lions on social media but really we are just cats who are scared of our own tails. Try to control your usage of social media and the effect it has on you. Not hashtag activism but people activism. Put down the phone for just two hours without even glancing on it. Go outside, enjoy the weather, soak it in. Look up and appreciate life, I challenge you. Make it face to face not screen to screen.