Social Media

I hate social media. I hate all that TikTok/shorts/reels stuff I can't seem to avoid. I don't use TikTok, but I see reposted TikTok videos on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube anyway. I hate what social media does to us. I hate the narrative it can paint, I hate the story-fying of our daily lives, the addiction, the falsification, the anonymity, the parasocial relationships, the misinformation, the misinterpretation, the sensationalism, the glorification, the ego booster, the validation, the reinforcement, the punishment, the branding, the rebranding, the superficial activism, the regurgitation, the algorithmic suggestions, the labels, the monetization with ads, the notifications, the illusion, the need to catch up, the endlessness.

I say all this on a website I promote on my Instagram lol.

Social media has given and taken away a lot from us in such a short period of time. I feel like we aren't as present in real life as we should be. We are more connected than ever, but it doesn't feel that way sometimes. I know I'm guilty of this. The minute there's "nothing" to do, we are so quick to pull out our phones and start scrolling timelines. It almost feels weird to stand around in a public setting and not pull out your phone cause now you're just some weird guy looking around reading signs or something random. People eat with their phones out. People stop whatever task they're doing to scroll posts. Some things that feel like they should be private feel okay to post about. I've witnessed guys scrolling through their phones in a public bathroom. Concerts or birthdays have like a million different angles cause everyone recorded and took pictures of the same thing. We try to perfectly capture that one moment in our gallery and forget to experience it firsthand as it happens sometimes. Then that snapshot memory gets stored and often times never revisited ever again. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking pictures or videos about something you're excited about. What I'm saying is it's easy to lose focus of what's in front of us and can quickly think about how cool it would look to post about it on social media. I wish we could all at least come to an agreement that we shouldn't record entire concerts. We gotta start shaming people again (jk but come on man lol). And stop doing that thing where you randomly start recording and expecting others to do a dance or something like that for your Instagram story. Social media is so funny like that and what it makes us do. Am I tripping? I love the internet and its potential, but it feels like we can do way more with it than how we use it currently.

I think the reality is that this is a new way of living for us. We just still haven't figured out how to effectively put it to use. Social media, and technology in general, is evolving so fast and it's hard for us to properly adapt with it. I feel like social media is still in some sort of infancy stage and we'll figure this out through trial and error. Yes, we've had social media for a couple of years at this point, but there's still a lot of growth that can come from it. Maybe I'm too optimistic about it cause it’s not looking good right now, but I have hope. It's just something about looking through the lives some people want others to perceive them as and then us reciprocating that behavior that feels weird. Some people do that thing where they post blurry photos and are artsy and stuff. Some people post their life moments. Some people don't post at all and just lurk through the posts of others. Some people post their food and drinks. Some people post a lot and others never post anything. Some people do not care about any of that and are just online for the memes, sports, news, or something unrelated to what I'm talking about. Some people switch it up. Some people are in it for several of these things or all of the above. Some people may purposely create a persona or not realize that they are. Often times we personally paint that persona of them (like me assuming blurry photos make you artsy). It's very easy to make assessments and assume people's personalities based off their online aesthetic and run with it as "that's who they are" based on what they post or don't post. This isn't a rant about me judging what people post online, but more so, wondering about the reasoning behind why we post the things we post. I think it's in our human nature to mentally label and categorize people as well. We should be more aware of that and just mind our business and let people post whatever they want to post. Sometimes I have to remind myself that everyone has their own view of how social media should be used or what it's for.

I think it's also not a reward if you aren't on social media for some sort of superiority complex mentality. You aren't any better than anyone else. Nobody cares bro. If you are on social media like most of us, I feel like the discipline and how you manage your usage is important.

Another thing that's kinda funny is how we follow each other and have no real connection with a lot of people besides having gone to school together at some point or we met one time and that was it. Out of the 500+ accounts I follow on Instagram, I probably genuinely care about like 20 (probably more but hear me out). I look forward to their posts, but I don't have a genuine attachment to the rest of the people I follow, respectfully (!). The strange thing about this rant is that, at the same time, it's really cool to see acquaintances/connections post things and seeing a glimpse of what they're up to. I'm really happy to see people from high school post about their accomplishments or something they're happy to share. It's cool to see where people are at cause it makes you think that at one point you guys were pretty close and it's good to see that they're doing alright. Or maybe you were never close and just happened to run into each other frequently before, but there's this happiness in seeing someone you knew from like middle school post about getting a promotion or something. In that way, we really are all connected. It feels like we're all rooting for each other from afar sometimes thanks to social media. I think that's the aspect of social media I really like... or maybe I'm just nosy haha

At the end of the day, we are all different people with different ideals and different interests. We all like different things and some of us just so happen to be into similar things. I think it's so easy to forget how gigantic the internet is. There are a bunch of online "influencers" and "content creators" with millions of followers you have never heard of. There's always an online community for something and the internet will continue to expand. There's always news to cover. It's not just funny online videos. You can learn so much. The point I'm trying to make is that you're not supposed to know everything that's happening on the internet. It's too much happening all at once. The weird thing is that social media sites suggest posts that you might find interesting so my timeline could look different from yours. Ironically, it feels hard to know what's going on around the world because things you're into are neatly packaged for you to view as soon as you refresh your app(s). Our perception of how things are seem greatly impacted by what we see and follow online and it's very easy to fall into a bubble of just that. It's very easy to follow people with similar ideologies and then that becomes all you know. Unless you're aware of that, it's comfortable following accounts or pages that are only covering stuff you care about and because of that, you don't care about other things or feel like people don't care enough about something you care about since that's all you see. These sources can quickly become our perceived reality and can lead to dangerous behaviors or dumb comment sections.

Speaking of dumb comments, I hate that we can't have genuine, public conversations with people online because there's always somebody being that "devil's advocate" and saying things just to say things. It's hard to find people interacting online and it being civil on Twitter or Instagram lol. Not saying everyone should agree on everything, but it's annoying to see people just fight in the comments. Civil conversations and disagreements can coexist and I think they should. We have such a powerful tool to communicate with people globally from our phones in an instant, but instead we're arguing about comparisons and "who was raised right" under a post. In addition to that, it's hard to know the mood or tone of a message you read and that can create misinterpretation. A message that says something like, "I don't care," can be a simple reply or a rude response to someone. There's a lot of room for misunderstanding without context, body language, facial expressions, or tone of voice the way we would pick up on like when talking in real life. Sarcasm is kinda hard to pick up on through text sometimes and an emoji can change the tone of everything too. If I added emojis throughout this post, it would probably have a completely different tone and it might even sound different from what I intended.

Another concerning thing about social media for me is the rapid processing of information you take in within minutes of scrolling. I don't think it's normal to see a funny video, then a video about a bombing, then a sports highlights, then a video about a puppy, then a video about a shooting, then another funny meme right after. I feel like this consecutive processing (or not processing at all) of a wide range of subjects and situations really messes with our mental health. I feel like it really desensitizes these things happening too and normalizes whatever wild video or picture you just saw. There's a danger, both personal and societal, in us seeing a traumatic event recorded and simply think "oh wow that's sad" and then swipe to the next video and laugh at a funny edit. That wide range of emotions one can experience in such a short period doesn't seem like a good thing. The hard part is how accessible and addicting this form of consumption is. I've gone from searching basketball highlights to then somehow ending up watching videos on turtles hatching on a beach shore (and it’s so interesting). I try to be aware of how I consume media, but I constantly fall into a rabbit hole of random, interesting videos online that I didn't plan on watching in the first place.

I feel like social media is gonna be one of those things we find out years later that it's not entirely good for you. I figure we already realize it's not good for you, but maybe with time we will see how bad it actually is. I imagine it's gonna be like how when they found out smoking cigarettes is actually very bad for you, but at that time, they were fine cause nobody knew the long-term effects and studies hadn't really been done yet. I feel like we haven't entirely felt the repercussions yet because we haven't had accessible social media for that long and also we haven't fully seen COVID-19's long-term social effects. My whole point is that we should try to be online way less and be more present in real life.

I think the one good thing for my generation (I was born in 1998) is that we at least experienced a bit of life before the internet really took over. We got to see life without super accessible phones, no real-time Google Maps, no unlimited talk/text/data, my dad would still buy newspapers, intentionally listening to the radio, using a Yellowbook to find a phone number, having to rent physical movies, figuring out random things to do to kill time, etc. I feel like you were pretty well off if you had a computer with internet access back then (or maybe that's just what it felt like when you were poor). We got to see this whole societal change take place over time and it led to us here. We know what not using the internet is like and experienced ways to live without social media even if for awhile. I am curious to know what adulthood would be like if we didn't have the smartphones or social media we rely so much on today. I worry for my little brother and his generation because it seems like they're the first generation to truly have advanced internet from the very start of their lives the way we know it now. These iPad children have access to information way sooner than most of us did. Or maybe things aren't as bad as I'm making it seem? Could I just be holding onto some kind of nostalgic memory of the way things were back then? Is this just going to be the new norm and I'm not willing to fully accept it yet? It's so convenient having a powerful device with us at all times for anything, but sometimes it gets to a point where we'd rather use our phones to do the basic math for us. Technology is a completely different topic from this post, but there is that interconnectivity (no pun intended) between tech and social media. Ideally, it would be funny if the younger generation figure this thing out and realize how dumb we were about social media when we started with it lol.

There is definitely good to social media. The genuine connection with people that I mentioned earlier is one. I love the support for one another during difficult times and what the sharing of a link can do during that time of need. It's hard to see or know who's rooting for you when you're down, but social media has boosted that moral support for many, including myself. Another good aspect of social media is the social awareness/acceptance it can raise. I feel like I've learned a lot on a range of topics that I probably wouldn't have learned on my own. There are a lot of great resources that others share that are very helpful and can help paint a clearer picture from other perspectives. Assuming that the information is accurate, social media can help elevate conversations that you probably wouldn't have thought about in your day to day life. Not only social subjects, but you can learn a lot about education, finance, food recommendations, art and music, and so much more. I often think about how I would probably not know like 90% of the things I know today if it weren't for social media/the internet.

Social media doesn't have a one-way solution, of course. We won't just remove it entirely nor should we let it control our entire social life. We can only go about it personally, I guess. It's helped those who want to keep in touch with their loved ones around the world. Imagine still relying on paper mail as the primary communication method to hear from someone? That would suck lol. There is actually a lot of good from social media and the communities we are able to form nowadays seem like a good thing when you look at it from that angle. It's cool that you can find a group of people you can relate to without having ever met them in real life. But having said that, there needs to be a balance or some sort of personal limitation. A lot of us are chronically online and live life revolving around the internet when there's a real world outside. The constant, mindless scrolling, posting, commenting, and liking of tailored content cannot be a good thing. Like I said, it's not all entirely negative. I just hope we can get to a place where we know how to use it in a healthy way and simultaneously live life in the present moment. I wish social media was more of a resource rather than the source for everything. Sometimes I think we're moving forward and other times I feel like we are doomed because of the internet. We'll see where this goes years down the road.

Anyway, follow me on Instagram lol.

Source: trust me bro