1. Developing Values Based on Comparison
Social Media gives you a terrible, falsified perception of other people. You cannot judge a person's character based on their social media, they are only going to post exactly what they want you to see, exactly how they want you to see it. People design their pages to curate to the personality they wish they had; not around the personality they truly have. It truly drives me crazy to see people post all about positivity and "being yourself" while simultaneously those same people choose to put down people who aren't like them. These falsified perceptions, hypocrisy, and the natural urge to compare ourselves to others is creating a generation full of people who aren't being who they truly are and rather who they think they need to be. This has always been a problem, but through social media, has made the comparison inescapable. Let us use the "grass is always greener" approach. Before social media, it would be like standing on your own lawn and only being able to compare your grass to the lawns of your handful of neighbors. But now, it is like you are in a low-flying plane comparing your lawn to thousands of others.
2. The Death of True Human Connection
When I am in a public space with no current task my natural "default" is to pull out my phone, and start scrolling. I am living in my own bubble, exposing myself to only things I want to see and hear. And so is everyone else. Twenty years ago, if you filled a room with a few dozen people with nothing to do, surely conversations and connections between people would start to form. It is somewhat frightening to me when I walk in to a room full of idle people and everyone is on their smart phone, endlessly scrolling, living in their own curated bubble. It appears to me that our cell-phones are now the primary source of communication rather than just a tool we utilize. Are the times of lively face to face conversations over? Are we all just going to live in a world we create on our smartphone from now on? I surely hope not, that is not a world I want to be a a part of. Some of my best memories are the heart to heart conversations I have had with the older generations, where they retell lively stories full of inflection, hand-motions, and genuine passion that would be impossible to retell over a text or social media post. How can we get those type of those conversations to be the standard again instead of the exception? There is no easy and clear solution. I think a healthy start would be setting restrictions and re-writing when it is socially acceptable to be on our phones.
3. Filling Your Head with Useless Knowledge of Others
Not to be rude here, but I do not care about what strangers on the internet had for dinner. I do not care to know when their mom's birthday is or who they are dating. But, when I am on my phone, tapping through Snapchat stories, not only I am exposed to a literal plethora of useless knowledge about internet strangers and distant friends, but I am also then thinking about it and adding it to my useless knowledge pool about them. Many of these people, I have literally never laid my eyes on, but I am occupied thinking about their life. It used to be, if you wanted to get to know somebody, you had to talk to them and ask them questions to get to know them. This process takes time and genuine interest, but the barrier of entry is now so incredibly low to get information on someone, that is a process we can repeat over and over dozens of times a day. This leads to us (specifically me) spending an absolute ridiculous amount of time not only seeking out this information but also then devoting time to thinking about it too.
4. It Keeps You From "Doing"
Social media keeps me strangely satisfied with sitting on the couch or in bed laying idle for hours on end. I am not thinking about the other better things I could be spending my time on, I am simply thinking blank simple thoughts about what is being displayed to me on my screen. I cannot tell you how many times I have skipped a workout, pushed back plans, or made myself late to something because I spent too much time on my phone. Internally, I want to go out and do fun and interesting things, like going to the gym, going biking at the local park, or just going out on the town with my friends or girlfriend. But, I end up defaulting to the easy world of scrolling on my phone getting very slight fulfillment. I hate that, if I was told tomorrow that I was going to die in a week, do you think I would spend any time on my phone at all? Doubt it. I would go out into the real world and live everyday to its fullest potential and not let myself default to what is easy. That is the problem, we don't realize the potential of the time we are wasting because of the slight fulfillment that mindlessly surfing gives us. If you want to do something, put your phone up, and do it, you will not regret it. There will always be more time to browse and scroll.
5. Endless Scrolling and Addiction
Social media was designed to be a tool to catch up and keep tabs on your old friends. Since then, it has morphed into something much different and something much less innocent. The companies do not have the best interest of their users in mind, but rather the money they can make from them and the time they are willing to spend using their platform. Something designed to be a "tool" should not be purposely addictive. But from the perspective of the companies, the more time someone spends on your site, the more potential they have to be advertised to and get their data collected. Social media companies have now designed their sites to be tailored to you and to keep you scrolling, wasting your life away. Our brains can literally light up with dopamine from a simple text from a friend, now, having a platform where we can watch hilarious cat videos back to back for hours, we can so easily trap ourselves in a revolving door of scrolling for hours at a time. That is by design and social media companies seeing nothing wrong with this, they just see green. TikTok for me was easily the worst, super short videos, tailored just for you and full of people in my own demographic. I could easily spend a few hours just sitting there, flicking my thumb and scrolling. Just like any other addiction, it is hard to put down and willingly be without. When I am left without my phone, I develop an anxiety that just revolves around "not-knowing". I am left with nothing to default to in social situations, nothing to supply my brain with those hits of dopamine, and I lose access to that tailored little world I had created for myself within my phone.
Social Media was not an easy thing for me to give up. It is hard to not know what is going on. But, I feel much better, more productive, and much more fulfilled. And the person who is reading this may not be as susceptible to the pulls of social media as me, but I can't recommend enough that you just try to limit your time spent on it. Go out, do fun stuff, and stop scrolling.
