Tuesday, May 28, 2013

i'm addicted to social media

you know you are when you google " addicted to social media".


it's the first thing i check when i wake up, bleary-eyed,
trying to kickstart my brain in the morning.
it's the last thing i check before i sleep, scrolling through tweets, instagram pictures.

when my lunch/dinner date leaves for the toilet mid-meal, i reach for my phone immediately and subconsciously.

when i stop at a red light, i reach for my phone immediately.

i don't know, maybe someone emailed me about asking me to act in a Hollywood movie and i had to reply within 5 minutes or my chance is over, you know?

i'm sure i'm not the only one.


 


i post daily on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter as much as possible,
keeping it up like clockwork,
subconsciously planning what goes on today, tomorrow.

it's my way of keeping connected to my followers, and i read every comment they make.

i know for sure that this is taking a toll on me, especially when articles like below resonate so much with me and i feel like escaping to an island with no wi-fi where i can just LIVE LIFE and not think about taking picturesque pictures to post.

Taken from http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/tech/stop-instagramming-your-perfect-life


I'm sorry - I am part of this unhealthy cycle perpetuating this Instagram Envy Effect that is not healthy for my followers, and definitely not for myself.

It's no doubt that everyone wishes to share the happy and beautiful things in their life, and never with bad intention.

Sometimes, it even seems like if we didn't share these happy and beautiful things, it might as well have not existed (cue thought experiment/philosophical musing "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" but that is a whole different issue for another day)



there, i said it.
of course, balance is the key.

so i put all my social media apps into a group on my iPhone so that i have to tap twice before reaching them, and i ended up looking at them A LOT LESS.

that one more tap broke my habit and stopped my subconscious from mindlessly tapping in and scrolling through all these social media feeds.


so as Robin Williams put it,
Go Out There! Live your life! Look at you, taking pictures with your phone! Look, look and then PAINT!!!








2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel you. And I've to admit I'm in a hopeless case for this. Cos' what I did was, with my jailbroken iPhone, I use it to create shortcuts into social media apps. (Yeah, seriously beyond hope..) I guess all this addiction is due to having too much 'free' time. So I'm pretty sure you aren't as bad as you mentioned above.. (There's still hope for you! :P)

Sometimes I also wonder, am I/are Humans too pathetic these days that instead of "sharing" our thoughts(happiness or sorrows) to the ones beside us, the first "person" we seek to turns out to be something that's non-living(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)?

I guess many feel 'stuck' in this cos' we're too used to all these social media. Which is why every now and then, whether I'm happy or sad, I'm making a point to myself to start talking more to 'humans'..! And maybe I should try what you did there, to make a folder on my iPhone. And of course, to also start LIVING LIFE... (Which I feel you already did very well!)

Sleep early! Sweet dreams!

:)

time_to_teaparty said...

addicted to social media hehe yea I know that too, I'M addicted too but I think it is a good thing. I meet so much people thanks to social media so it can't be that bad (^_^) and I post daily on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter as much as possible too hehe
sahring your life, getting comments from friends and meeting new friends. A few weeks a go I got a message from a girl over we chat that she is visiting my city and wants to meet up and thanks to that I found a new friend from malaysia.
I think its a matter of timing when you are using social media, its bad when you use it without really using it, so only staring at it but sharing stuff and communicat with others is a good thing.
I see it like this, you are only telling your friends what you are doing without seeing and hearing them. I love social media its an easy connection beetween people you would never meet without it.

and about that
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
yes of course it makes a sound you only dont hear it because you are to far away and the acoustic isn't reaching youre ear anymore :P

and its good to read you again, its been a long time.

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