I wake up in the morning and after checking my important emails, the news, etc., I go through my standard rotation of social media apps: Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. When I’m bored in between classes, I turn to the same rotation. Right before I go to bed, you’ll find me going through the same apps. The monotonous and almost habitual practice of regularly turning to social media, however, is not cutting it for me anymore. I’m bored.
Without even thinking about it, I turn to social media apps as if it is a mandatory pit stop every time I check my phone. It could be checking my grades on Canvas or replying to a text message — I will somehow end up on a social media app. I have relied on it for so long as a form of immediate, quick entertainment that I have become wired to constantly check them.
Initially, Instagram and Snapchat were fun for me to see what everyone was up to. I loved seeing people’s posts on my feed and engaging with the content of my friends and influencers. But what I am realizing is that I have followed so many different people from different stages of my life—that my feed has been overflowing with content of people who are not even a part of my life anymore. As I mindlessly scroll through these posts, I can’t even remember who some of these people are. As harsh as it may sound, I’m just not that interested in seeing the Coachella posts of a friend of a friend of a friend from high school.
Luckily, for me, TikTok came around a few years ago to provide me with a fresh, new social media app to get sucked into. The short clips of entertainment, especially during quarantine at the beginning of the pandemic, were addicting because it is so easy to quickly watch a 30-second TikTok in between tasks. I can watch as I’m walking to my car, when I’m waiting in line at the grocery store, during my study breaks, and so many other instances that I probably didn’t even realize! My “For You Page” is catered to my specific interests and continues to be my most viewed app. But now, I’m starting to lose interest in TikTok too. With everyone’s lives going back to the hustle and bustle of pre-pandemic life, there is less unique content creation and are less influencers I enjoy watching. My For You Page is filled with different versions of the same content and does not catch my attention any longer than 5 minutes on the app. TikTok has also given their users the option to make longer TikToks, when the biggest appeal of the app was the briefness of it with new content engaging its users every 15-60 seconds. And if you’re anything like me, going from 15-second videos to 3-minute videos made me lose my patience and my interest. I know that it is sad and almost embarrassing to say that I can’t sit through a 3-minute video, but being accustomed to and enjoying the shortness of the videos on the app made the new upgrades unappealing to me. With content already becoming stale, adding more time just made the videos even more boring.
I guess this is all to say that taking a step back from social media has made me realize how dependent on it I was for entertainment and how it has evolved as its role in my life over the years. I’m actually glad that I’m bored of it because it has allowed me to unlearn the unhealthy habits I had in relation to it. Social media has and will continue to play a big role in society, so I won’t say that I can quit cold turkey, but I am able to work on honing in on the aspects of social media I still enjoy and engage with in a healthier way.