The Effects of Social Media
The other night before I went to bed, I started thinking about how crazy this world has become. I don’t know about you but if it’s 2 AM, I start thinking about weird stuff and then I just can’t go to sleep. This was one of those nights. Absolute torture for me because I had a major test the next morning at 8 AM. Oh the joys of crazy, late-night thoughts. This post is going to be a little different than my normal college lifestyle posts. This is a partial rant and partially me just trying to figure out this technology-obsessed world.
I began thinking about how obsessed this world is with technology and constantly being up to date on the latest news and having to know what everyone else is doing. As I walk through campus on my way to class or the way to the gym(who am I kidding, I don’t go to the gym anymore), everyone is so mesmerized by their phone. Everyone is looking down at their phone not even paying the slightest bit of attention to the world around them. I try to make it my personal goal to not be on my phone as I’m walking to class. Our campus is beautiful and you only go to college once. I want to take in as much as possible. I’m not going to lie, trying to separate myself from technology for those 20 minutes is extremely difficult. But, in reality, what harm is 20 minutes without checking my phone really going to cause?
I am a culprit of being consumed by technology. I’m constantly checking Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YikYak. You name it, I check it probably a good 20+ times a day. Even if I’ve just checked Twitter, I’ll still refresh the page just in hopes that someone has tweeted something. If you think about it, that’s actually insane. Why is it so important to constantly be knowing what everyone on Earth is doing? I contribute some of my constant need to be online and on social media to blogging. Blogging is a very social activity for very introverted people. If you want to grow your numbers, you have to be active on social media. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and now YouTube. It never ends.
I think what brought me to this train of thought was that I was obsessing over this snap streak that I have with someone. I was worried that we were going to lose this stupid number that represents the amount of time you’ve been in constant communication with someone. If you think about it, that’s crazy. Why does a number representing constant communication mean so much? Why has this become important in our life? Who cares if you’ve been in constant communication with someone for 17 days. It doesn’t matter. That moment was the point in my life where I needed to make a change. I can’t be constantly consumed with other people, what they’re doing, and trying so hard to keep them in my life.
And that brings me to my second realization of that night: I have to stop trying so hard to keep people in my life and being afraid of letting things go. There’s that old saying that people who want to be in your life will make an effort to do so. I cannot express how absolutely true that is. If you read all of this, I truly applaud you. Thank you for listening to the inner-workings of my mind.
-Abigail T.
