Being a common man I was least worried about it. I was just enjoying memes and different posts from all the pages, occasional updates from my friends, it was all cool.
Then one day I decided to explore another such website, to have a different experience and learn what is it all about, why most of the celebrities exist there and not on this one.
The only difference from the last time was that this time I was a bit more aware and observant about what social media is !!
So when I joined this new social website, I observed mostly people posting 4 to 6 times a day on an average. Some witty jokes or sarcastic lines, which were cool, and they were getting 10 to 15 shares and around 30-40 likes per post, so to have a little feel good I decided to try it on my own.
I wrote some witty lines, created some memes of my own, some office humor stuff, to see what response I will get.
Just within a week, I started having a feeling of anticipation, did anyone liked my post or maybe shared it? Or did I get a new follower. It really disturbed the peace of my mind.
The above scenario was continuing, also the urge to get more likes, made me read what others were writing and sharing, what one liners were they putting, how they were so popular.
And within two weeks of my experience , I started feeling tired, restless and a feeling of chaos in my mind. Gradually, headaches started. There was lack of concentration, couldn't think straight. I got worried, what exactly was happening to me, shall I consult a physician.
However before consulting the physician, I gave a thought what is the new change in my life, that I have introduced in the past couple of weeks and there it was, a new social website account, so I gradually controlled my urge to browse it and now I have quit it completely . Now I feel like the way I was, enjoying the quietness and peace of mind.
Before I point out what anyone can take away from this experience of mine, I would like to mention how reading an article like this, is different from the newsfeed, we scroll on social media.
In articles like these, the thoughts are put together in a continuous manner about some particular topic and this improves your reading ability as well as concentration, also such readings are done by choice of the readers and gets you something important to think about.
However, the social media newsfeed posts are just random stuff, making you read and absorb lots and lots of information without any particular context, disturbing your concentration and keeping you busy. Though, I agree making memes and other videos is creative but does it really worth the effort our youth is putting into it, is there no better way they can channel their energy for the betterment of society?
So, here are few things what everyone can take away from this experience of mine.
1) Our mind remains in continuous anticipation when we post something new on these platforms, which keeps us under constant anxiety about how people will react to the content we have posted.
2) Continuously reading these one liners and memes, takes away the deep thinking and concentration from us and keeps us distracted, sometimes causes forgetfulness too.
3) Randomly scrolling the feed and looking for something that we can enjoy keeps our mind in information processing mode, making us feeling mentally tired and exhausted.
4) These virtual followers, gives us a false sense of accomplishment, which puts us under the burden to post more stuff, to get more followers or at the least maintain what we have.
5) Takes away the ability to deeply think about any problem, making us live with them, so when we are not browsing in virtual world, the real world makes us feel think about the problems at hand, so we develop a escapish tendency about our problems.
6) Likes and appreciation in the online world, is like a shot of dopamine, everytime we get a like, we get a hit of dopamine shot and when this runs low, we post more, to get the dopamine hit Again. This not only causes addiction but also desensitize our dopamine receptors in brain, thus making us feel depressed unnecessarily in the real world.
7) Keeps us emotionally dissatisfied, as we know that these followers are just numbers, nothing can be expected out of them, no deep connections can be formed.
8) A negative feeling that we aren't doing anything productive, just killing our time, which could be better utilized for doing something better makes us feel guilty about our actions.
So the question arises, shall we quit social media completely? I would suggest No.
The fear of missing out (Fomo), won't let us do it.
The best thing to handle this is keep things at the bay, uninstall their mobile apps, so you don't get constant notifications . Try doing it through web browsers for a short span of time, maybe 15 minutes a day, at a particular time. This way it will be just for few minutes that we will check if anything important is there and worth taking a look.
With better concentration and focused approach anything can be achieved in less time, in a structured result oriented way.
Who doesn't wants a better life, with deep emotional connections, more active lifestyle, looking good and eating right. But all this is only possible if we will free our time from browsing internet purposelessly.
These are my personal thoughts, everyone might think differently and have a different outlook about it, so you can obviously do whatever suits you best.
The only irony about this article is that I have to use social media to make people read about the negative impacts of it.
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