Why Social Media Is Bad For You

Unsocial media

Social media are used by millions of people all around the globe, and it might be one of the reasons why people are less and less... well... social.

We live in quite a weird world. Walking in hallways, you'll often see that most people are on their phones scrolling or speaking, and this isn't always a bad thing but most people do that EVERY TIME they're alone, and this leads to less and less social connection.

It's important to speak to others and make friends and meet people, and often-times, people close in on themselves by pulling out their phones. Let me tell you a story. It's the story of Jimmy.

Jimmy is 12 years old when he gets his first phone. All throughought his scolarity, he uses his phone to speak to his friends, watch videos on Youtube and play video games. When he grows up, he uses social media as a way to speak to his friends and comrades.

But, the problem with Jimmy, is that Jimmy uses his phone as a comfort zone. When he feels uncomfortable, be it because he's in the hallway alone with strangers and he feels awkward, or at the doctor office and he feels awkward, or when there's a cute girl infant of him and he's scared to approach her, Jimmy closes on himself.

He turns on his phone and goes on the weather app, even tho he never watches the weather. Then, he goes into the message app, and sends a random message to his friends to act like he's occupied. He's socially awkward and his only way to feel in control and cool is to... use his phone. Because behind a screen, he learned he could hide.

The problem is, when this becomes a habit, people do not live in real life anymore. They spend most of their days on phone and TV and video-games and Youtube. And that's the case of the vast majority of the population.

And, let's say that you've got Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and all those famous social medias, and you use them from time to time. You're still social and cool and awesome but you use them in moderation. In this case, why not using them. But still, try to reduce them if you can. Social media is frying your brain, especially if you use it as a mean of instant gratification instead of as a mean of social connection and conversations.

I have Snapchat, that's the only social media I have on my phone. And guess what, that's enough for me! I don't need Instagram, because I know I'll use it mainly to waste my time. Same for TikTok, I'll waste my time and I'll be unproductive. I'm better off reading a good book and having a good time.

Social media is great if used as a means of social connection. For example, LinkedIn is great because it enables you to get in contact with professionals and interesting companies in your sector of choice. Same for Snapchat, which can enable you to speak to friends and family members in an easier manner than the message app.

However, apps such as TikTok or Instagram can rapidly become "instant gratification" means, even Snapchat. The easy to watch, fast paced videos that last only a few seconds can become addictive. Same goes for Twitter, it can become addictive to scroll and learn information that is useless and waste your time and laugh at a few videos, etc.

So how to stop wasting your time on social media? That is the real question.

Well, the first thing you could do, and probably the best thing too, would be to reduce or completely stop using social media, outside of one or two truly useful ones.

For example, Snapchat is truly useful for me because it enables me to speak with my friends and meet new people easily since I don't need to have their contact but I can simply search up for their name on Snapchat.

On contrary, I don't have Instagram, TikTok and Facebook because they can be rapidly used as a mean of instant gratification, and I don't truly need it. Even tho, in reality, I could get on Facebook because it can be quite useful from time to time. But, as of right now, it's not in my projects.

So what I'm saying here, is that you should first off try to reduce and erase the social media apps that aren't useful. So make a list of every social media app you have, and try to find the ones you should keep, not as a means of having fun, but as a "useful" metric.

Action Step: Make a list of all the social media apps you have and only choose one or two that is truly useful.

The second thing you could do is start contacting people on your phone messaging app instead of any other app. If you can, try to speak to most people by message through your messaging app, as it's... made for that.

Finally, we'll try to reduce social media by adding a new self-improvement activity instead. So, for me, it could be reading books. For someone who has the habit of watching TikTok one hour a day, he or she could spend one hour exercising more, or exercising, or cooking healthy foods, or researching articles on how to cook healthy foods, or reading books.

What I mean here, is that you should give up social media when it's useless and only for "relaxing" (even tho you're not relaxing since you're frying your brain) and you should rather spend this time being productive and doing things that will either relax you for real (meditating, walking in nature, sleeping, taking a nap, calling a good friend) or that will make you better (reading, working on a meaningful project to you, etc).

Try to quit social media day by day. Instead of going all out once and then falling back into your bad habits, try to progressively erase social media from your life until it doesn't have a place in it anymore. Start small, erase it day by day, little by little.

What I mean is, if you quit it too abruptly you might have a hard time quitting it for real, since you might start going back on it on days your mood feels low or when you feel tired or this and that. So try to quit social media step by step until... you've did it for real.

Remember that social media fries your brain and it plays with your hormones (your dopamine receptors, the receptors of the hormone of pleasure). So be careful about it, and use it wisely.

Conclusion

Finally, I wanted to thank you for reading this article. I wish you can quit social media without any problem and that you understood why it's so bad for you.

Have a good day my friend.

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