There are many reasons that contribute to the fact that you should quit social media. But let’s see about a few of them and why they are bad. Whether it is Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, or Twitter, you are feeding your mind content 24/7. Let’s discuss the effects of this content and why it is bad for you. Note that this article is for people who are addicted or close to addiction to social media. Everyone is responsible for their own use of social media.
1. Damaged Self-Esteem
What do you see when you open your Instagram account? Let’s say you are following a bunch of celebrities and some social media influencers. You will always see these people looking their best in every way. Pictures, taken from the perfect angle. Not a single wrinkle to be seen, showing their everlasting youth. And while you stare at that picture for minutes, lusting for the perfection presenting before you with a twinkle in your eyes, your phone screen turns black and shows you your reflection. You look at your own face. Your own face. And the twinkle disappears.
This is not what you were lusting after. This is not what you wanted. You look down at one of your many flaws and start to hate your own skin. You hate every inch of it because it is not worth showing off in your head.
Here’s the thing, people never flaunt their flaws or failures. If you have a diamond and a stone, you’ll show off the diamond. On the other hand, you won’t showcase a mere stone. You start to look at the smallest things in your body as “ugly”. As a result, your self-esteem takes a toll and you might develop some sort of mental health issue.
Every time you upload a picture or post something, you constantly check how many likes, double taps, or retweets you got. Likes are directly proportional to your happiness. It fiddles and wobbles. It drops and rises and eventually, it ends. your happiness is very short-lived and mostly surrounded by anxiety, fear, and stress. This might lead to insomnia, anxiety, stress, and, in some cases, depression.
2. False Lifestyle
There is always a need for every one of us to be financially stable. To be able to provide for ourselves and maybe for our families. We don’t have to apologize for taking care of our family. However, sometimes, it feels that way. You feel sorry for yourself for not being able to afford the most expensive car or the most expensive bag. You feel the need to make an excuse for this shortcoming.
The truth is, you are like 90% of the people out there. Just living life, earning money to put bread on the table, and staying out of trouble. But all these 90% of people seem to be looking at the 10% that lives like there’s no tomorrow.
There is nothing wrong with living a normal life. Where you don’t own millions of wads of cash. Because guess what? It’s not that common. No one cares, but you. You are the only one looking at yourself this way. Most importantly, when you stop, you won’t give importance to another opinion of your life. And that’s what you need to do.
3. Addictive & Time Consuming
If you are addicted to social media, you’ll probably remember how it all started. You would use your phone for a couple of hours max. then when you had nothing to do, you thought, you turned on your phone and you saw that notification and you clicked. You clicked every time there was a notification. And you kept clicking. To the point where you didn’t need a notification to take your phone in your hands. As a result, every minute, every second, when you had something important to do, you looked at your phone for a split second. And as a result, ended up wasting hours of precious time.
This happened all the time. And it only got worse. You would uninstall the app only to download it after a little while. You would be sleepy at night in your bed, but you couldn’t put your phone away.
How to Quit Social Media?
Social media was not developed with bad intentions. It started with the intention to connect the world. Which was successful. However, everything has its downfall. No one could predict the shortcoming of this. No one could have imagined. Social media is not good or bad, it is the people who use it, who are good or bad. Their intentions are good or bad. Their actions are good or bad.
For instance, when you text someone something, social media is not forcing you to text, it is you. You are willfully committing this act. And you can willfully stop as well. You can try different things like:
- Unfollow pages/people who instill negative emotions in you.
- Uninstall the app
- Delete your account.
This of course might be a big step for a lot of you. So, we can start with baby steps like
- Change the notifications settings
- Unfollow people/pages you don’t talk to
- Use social media time as a reward for completing a task.
There might be ways that would only work for you and I could name a hundred more. But that would all be in vain if you don’t follow. Remember, only you can change yourself.
