Day Seven: Five Problems with Social Media
1. It is a time suck.
Social media can take up a lot of our time. Consider the last time you were at home alone, bored, no plans and nothing going on, and instead of scrolling through hours and hours and hours of Facebook news feed, you picked up a book or the newspaper.
I'll wait.
It never happens!
Social media is designed to suck us in. You can literally scroll down on Facebook and Instagram, and also Twitter, for eternity. Like, there is no end. Keep scrolling and scrolling, you will never get to the bottom of the page. And they do that on purpose to keep you trapped! I mean literally, you can spend an entire day online and get to the end of the day, wondering how you just spent the day.
Time. Suck.
2. It is an attention whore.
My mom always says she hates when we are on our phones when we're over for dinner. And 9 times out of 10, we aren't talking to anyone or do anything.
We're just scrolling forever and ever into oblivion.
Social media take a lot of time and attention away from our face to face interactions. When we're together, we still have our noses buried in our phones. We go out to eat with our friends and we're too busy taking #foodporn photos to have an uninterrupted conversation. I feel like something could be said about isolation and "selfies," if I wanted to put a lot of extra thought into it.
3. It puts unnecessary pressure on your relationships.
I read a meme recently that said the biggest sign of a healthy relationship is no mention of it on Facebook. And I believe that may be very close to true.
Should you share photos of you and your partner doing something fun or on some adventure, or snuggled up in front of the TV on a Sunday night? Sure. There is a huge difference between hiding your relationship, versus oversharing every detail to the point where I feel like I am the third party in your relationship. Don't hide. Just don't disclose everything.
I don't need to know when you're in a fight, or when you've made up. It's weird. And I think it probably makes things worse in the long run.
Now don't get me wrong. I actually am a sentimental dork, and I like to see a friend's Facebook status change from Single, to In a Relationship. And from In a Relationship to Engaged. And then from Engaged to Married. And I like to see their last name's change - even though I think that changing your last name is a super archaic and weird thing to do. BUT, I do hate to see someone change their relationship status back and forth between Single and In a Relationship, and there is no worse status than It's Complicated.
Get out of here with all that drama! Why are you telling the world that you are having relationship problems?!!
Also please stop with the overemotional sad quotes that you literally never post except for the times when you are in a fight with your partner. Gross. You need to stop that right now.
4. It spreads a lot of wildly untrue information.
I mean, chances are if you are reading this blog post, you don't actually get your news from Twitter or Facebook - because I like to believe I am friends with people who are more intelligent than that. And I haaaaaate to use really ANY word used by our piece of shit garbage hep president, but there is soooo much fake news on the internet!! Like, just because it was a meme, does not mean it's real!
Please, please I beg of you, people. Read REAL news. Locate a legit news source. Support the media, especially locally.
Just remember that Fox News is the Twitter of the media, and don't believe anything you read.
5. It portrays people through unrealistic filters.
I dare you to try and locate the most recent photo you have taken of yourself, in which you have not applied one single filter. No funny faces or bunny ears from Snap Chat, no make-you-tanner-than-you-really-are filter from Instagram. Just a regular photo of yourself. That you both took and then posted on social media.
I bet you have a hard time finding one. Because we now filter our whole life before we post it.
It's funny...writing this post makes me sort of want to log in and delete my Facebook account immediately.
I mean, I won't. I can't. I'm clearly as addicted as everyone else, and am guilty of setting aside the new book I am desperate to read (Trevor Noah's "Born a Crime") to scroll through nonsense for eternity instead...which is ridiculous, since I have been DYING to read his book!
Un-gluing yourself from social media is challenging, for sure. But the days that I make a strong commitment to not log in, are really always great days! It seems like a ridiculous thing to have to do, but one of my resolutions for 2018 (because yes, I do think about those for a long time in advance, and yes I do make them every year) will be to select a social media free day every week. One day a week, no social media. How pathetic that I think it'll be hard and will seriously take an effort!
And now, off I go to link this blog to my social media accounts to make sure people read it...
#ironic
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