We wake up, we wait for the train, we’re lying in bed at night. It doesn’t matter where we are or what time of day it is, it seems that social media can quickly become a part of our everyday lives. While it might seem harmless to start with, there are plenty of reasons that you should spend less time on social media.
You forget about yourself
Have you ever found yourself talking about someone else’s life, all thanks to the photos and statuses you saw on social media? It can be easy to get caught up in the moment and fall down a trap of researching everything about their life – all instead of focusing on yourself. We might not even be that close in real life, but having access to their online presence can sometimes make it feel as though they are a huge part of your life, even if they’re not.
We can become dependant on others
Do you have fun because you’ve enjoyed yourself or because a snap of the moment earned you a few hundred likes online? Spending too much time on social media could make us dependent on others. Without their love and interest in how we are living our lives, some people can find themselves doing certain things and meeting specific people just to make our online following feel happy.
We forget about the moment
Some of us live for the moment. Others live for how many likes they get on their upload. Spending time with our friends should be all about having fun at the time and not how many responses we get to uploading a photo of the evening. Plus, spending too much time on social media means we can head to places for pictures rather than the time as well as spending more time worrying about how many people want to interact with our post rather than living our lives.
We lose time with our friends
Social media is supposed to bring us closer to the people around us. So why are we more isolated and alone than ever before? If we want to say “happy birthday” to our friends or spend time with them, then why don’t we take some time to spend with them rather than posting on their wall or tagging them in photos? The interactions we have on social media are often superficial, especially as everyone else can see our pictures and conversations.
Our lives can become public property
While social media can be a great way to show our photos and memories to our friends and families, it means that a lot of our lives suddenly becomes public property. Sure, we can decide who is on our friend list and change our privacy settings, but what about who they are showing our profiles to? And who can get access to our locations and photos without us even knowing? Posting too much of our lives on social media means it might not be long before our lives become public property.
Social media is great. We can share our lives with our nearest and dearest and find long-lost friends with a search or two. However, like everything in life, it’s important to find the balance between social media and the rest of our lives if we want to keep things on track. After all, social media might be having more of an effect on our lives than we ever realize.
