on social media addiction
Being in my early 20s, there should be no surprise that I have grown up with and have extensively used social media platforms to socialise, communicate, and share ideas with other people. It is no secret that these platforms can and have caused harm to their user's mental health (me included!), but even knowing this I've sat on my hands for years before actually taking action to remedy this situation.
However, as a lot of you know, it's not easy to just drop social media cold turkey. In my opinion, I think there are a few main reasons why this is the case, and I will attempt to argue against each one in this post.
1. Social media is addictive
Multi-million dollar companies spend huge amounts of capital and time to create algorithms where their sole purpose is to make you spend more time on their platform. All these companies want you to do is to stay on the platform and hopefully spend money on advertisements that are shown to you.
As the saying goes:
If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.
But that doesn't mean you can't take a more controlled approach towards consuming content on these platforms and limit the time you spend doom-scrolling through the use of apps or browser extensions.
2. You would be missing out
Since uninstalling Instagram and Reddit at the start of this year, - which were what I used to spend the most time on in the past - I have only felt this way on one or two occasions where a friend had a particularly momentous accomplishment which I would have liked to know about. I still keep in contact with my close friends through other means like Discord (which could be argued is a social media as well) and text messages, so I don't really miss out on much going on in my friend's or family's lives.
3. You will be bored
I've come to realise more and more that boredom is actually a good thing. Taking time to just sit and let your thoughts flow freely, not unlike meditation, is one of the best things you could do. As you let yourself get bored, your brain will automatically fill up with ideas and thoughts that would have never surfaced, had you not given it the space it needed to do so. This lets you be more in control of your mind and take back some of the space in your head that was used to mindlessly process meaningless content.
Since quitting traditional social media altogether, I have regained so much time in my day where I can spend on other meaningful endeavours like working on my career, learning a new language, or even starting a blog! Where I used to spend hours in a day just aimlessly scrolling and remembering none of it even five minutes later, I was now granted with an extra hour or two a day to actually spend my time on things that make for a more fulfilling life.
That is not to say I am completely free from my addiction though, I do occasionally catch myself after a 2 hour YouTube binge session feeling a little disappointed in myself. To that end, I've installed browser extensions like DeArrow and Unhook to reduce the temptation of going on a binge and wasting an entire day. I have also installed an app creatively named AppBlock to reduce my screen time.
Be that as it may, although I am singing the praises of ditching social media, I am not endorsing for everyone to completely quit social media like I have. Some people have family and friends on a certain platform which is the only way of communicating with them, and others might have their careers dependent on having social media presences on those platforms. You should also be able to spend some time on the weekends just binging a show on Netflix if you want to.
What I am endorsing for is the intentional usage of social media. Rather than letting an algorithm lure you in with content that was specially designed to make you waste time, you should have the capacity to dictate how you spend your time on the platform. Any social media is detrimental if used in the wrong way, I would argue this includes Bear Blog. If you're spending all of your time reading other people's posts just for the sake of reading without actually taking in and interacting with the content in the post, it is no better than spending hours on TikTok doom-scrolling.
But at the end of the day, these are my own experiences with social media and how I am dealing with this particular strain of addiction. I'm sure you have your own thoughts on this subject, and I would love to discuss with anyone who is interested! If you are in the Blaugust discord, just shoot me a message and I would love to have a chat.
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