Why is it that something we lived perfectly well without for so many years has the ability to take over our lives? Can you now imagine a world without social media? Without the Facebook toolbar being on your phone, being able to “heart” your friend’s Instagram photo, or send a quick Snapchat en route to the gym? Would you be able to survive a day, or a week, or even a month, without looking at your phone for a notification? Maybe you could. Maybe you couldn’t. But why does it feel like we’re missing something if we don’t have our phone in our hand? Is this total dependence on technology in our everyday world exposing us and making us more vulnerable, or is this just a natural change?
A recent update on Apple devices allows you to monitor and restrict how much time you spend on your phone and, even more specifically, on certain apps. Look at the number of hours you spend on your phone per day. Is it shocking? Maybe you use your phone for work and productivity, if you blog or email regularly, for example. If that’s the case, then how much time on top of that is spent glued to your phone for ‘personal use’ – once that usage is noted, perhaps you begin to realise how much more productive you could be with your free time, investing more time in university work (that you supposedly haven’t had time to do), or even just spending time with friends in person (imagine!).
It might now be worth examining what we are actually looking at during the hours spent scrolling through our different social media platforms – jumping between the choice of apps when one of them gets particularly dry. Is it photos of your favourite burger restaurant on Instagram, or countless bikini photos of America’s top model? Either is fine of course, unless, the way you are analysing these photos is something much deeper.
I believe the dangers of social media surround the idea of reality, whether we realise that these snapshots people upload onto their accounts are not actually their real life, but in fact small moments which they capture and share with their audience for a particular purpose: showcasing their summer body in a bikini (after photoshopping cleanly around the waist), or a photo of their favourite skincare product (because they have been paid by a company to do so). My point is, social media has the potential to be a fun, positively-engaging tool, to communicate with family and friends – however, knowing that not every person uses it in this way is the success for achieving a healthy relationship with it.
Is social media just another way to snoop into people’s lives without having to physically communicate (or even move more than a finger) to do so? Maybe we are becoming more and more anti-social, and instead, this makes us more and more nosey for information.
Not only that, but why do we feel the need to post so much of our own lives on social media? Why do we have to pose in front of our cocktail drink before we even get to take our first sip? To prove that we do actually have a social life and friends? To show off an aesthetic lifestyle that only appears every other month? Does posting and receiving a certain number of likes or comments actually help us feel any less lonely, or like we have more friends? Potentially, social media just creates more and more synthetic friends, that only really care about the lifestyle and persona we uphold on our social media, instead of a genuine concern for our health or well-being.
Despite all of this, I don’t think social media has to be such an all-consuming space for us. Ultimately, we have complete control – over how much time we spend on social media, what we post, who we share our posts with, who we follow and who we communicate with. So maybe we ought to stop blaming social media and learn to use it more responsibly for our own needs. Because no, social media is not a person: it does not have feelings – having a healthy relationship with social media is a balance that you need to figure out for yourself.