It’s hard to not get consumed and eventually be drowned in the social media climate of today. Although it can be beneficial for networking, social media has become the evil spirit that controls us on a daily basis. Social media isn’t everything and eventually you may find yourself straying away from reality if you become too wrapped up in the world of social media. This along with other reasons is why we should take social media breaks and eventually just drop social media all together.
1. It’s not 100% real
You know the old saying “what you see is what you get”? Well that’s not always the case especially with social media. Because we live in the age of social media influencers, we often expose ourselves to what we think is the perfect image. We often forget if we were to interact with certain individuals in real life, it may not be what we expect. At the very least, they may not even physically look how they look in real life vs. social media (i.e. catfishing). Also, it’s important to remember that people post what THEY WANT you to see. I’m pretty sure they may post an “ugly” morning selfie or a somewhat messy room, but those from the outside looking in cannot assume that life is always that glamorous. Overtime I’ve learned, at times, social media influencers, well the majority of social media users, can falsely advertise the daily life of average individuals.
2. Self-love is the best love
We’ve all been there…scrolling on social media and we see the girl with the perfect curves, hair, face, etc., and we’re just hoping one day we’ll magically wake up and look like her. Sadly, that won’t happen! Sometimes we see men and women and gush over there looks all while bashing our own. We began to hate ourselves and end up in a deep hole of self-hate. I personally can relate to this story because for the longest time, I’ve dealt with insecurities of being so small. Especially having small legs. So I was doing research on how to gain weight fast. I was buying protein shakes and pills and nothing worked. Until I found myself scrolling through social media and I saw these before and after pics of girls who had gained weight within weeks by using this weight gain syrup. So you know me, I purchased and used it. I did my research and looked at the pros and cons of using this product, and yes the cons outweighed the pros. This product was known to make you super drowsy within the first few days of usage. Also, this product is said to slow down your metabolism, and thus it makes you super hungry. I rememer I was eating like 4 or 5 times a day, and majority of the food wasn’t healthy, but users who advocate for the product say it’s crucial to workout while using this product. I was just amazed at how much I was eating, and I knew it couldn’t be healthy for me. On top of that, this product is not FDA approved so there’s no telling what will happen to people who have taken this faithfully, 10 years from now. I say all that to say, that there’s nothing wrong with making changes to yourself, but do not make these changes based on the images of others because what makes us so beautiful is that we’re not the same and we’re definitely not perfect. Just remember this, the number of likes, comments, shares does not determine your worth and never forget that.
3. More time dedicated to personal goals
If you go on your phone and see how much time you’ve spent on social media, you would be amazed at what else you could’ve done with that time. On average, adults spend about two hours on social media each day. For teenagers, the average time spent on social media is about 6 hours a day. Do you know how many important things could get done in 2-6 hours? ALOT! I say all that to say, we all have personal goals that we want to achieve and we probably would have them all accomplishe if we took the time that we spend on social media and used it to work on ourselves and improving our lifestyle.
Now granted, I get it. Social media plays a big role in society today. It’s how most of communicate, how we get our news, etc. However, social media has gotten to the point where it can trigger mental breakdowns with our population, and so for the sake of your mental health and peace of mind just consider taking a social media break. Those close to me take breaks as long as a week on average. For me, I remember at one point I took a month long break from social media. What kept me going was remembering how happy I was before social media and how carefree I was, and I along with many others are trying to work towards that. If you haven’t done so already, take the break you deserve from social media and you’ll find this new outlook on life occurring in your thoughts.
HCXO!