Hi. My name is Marwa and I’m a social media addict!
If you confront an addict with his/her fixation, the first thing they’re going to say is “Of course not… I can quit it whenever I want.” Well, that’s a LIE!
Now I have a confession to make. I do have this habit. Whenever I open my browser, I start typing Twitter & Facebook with no purpose in mind. I don’t always have something to do there. Sometimes all I do is scroll down hunting for anything interesting or entertaining. Even when I find none, I still came back for more. Maybe my addiction is for scrolling down. That is just ridiculous!
So one day, my smart phone died on me! At first I was going crazy. Losing my contacts, my WhatsApp, and my relatively good camera on the go; I went through pain trying to recover them. I was grieving what I thought I needed. But bit by bit I realized the hidden bless of being offline. I noticed how social media was seriously invading my privacy and time: WhatsApp tone interrupts me when I’m setting the mood to write a new piece before the deadline. A Twitter message wakes me in the middle of the night; it was hard enough to put myself to sleep to begin with. A notification beep comes out of my browser when I am doing a research and then I don’t even remember what I was doing there.
I could have bought a new phone but for some reason I felt more comfortable offline. It was like being liberated! I decided to delete my Twitter account, deactivate Facebook and see how life is going to be.
And the experience was very much worth it! Here is what I gathered from it.
• My time was being swallowed.
I’m a distracted person by default, with a tiny attention span. I have so many interests.. so much to do, and so little time. I can barely find time to cover things I wanna do in my day. And yet I purposely go waste my time watching posts, photos, comments, and likes.
The day I lost my smart phone, deleted my Twitter account, and deactivated my Facebook; the most productive period of my life actually began. I read more. I wrote more. I watched movies. I learned new things. And it actually gave me so much time to socialize in real life.
• The seek for validation.
Social media can either give you fake ego boost, or destruct you if you can’t keep yourself restrained. We share things to get some love in return. Your self-esteem can go up and down based on the numbers you receive, and the ones who noticed you and decided to validate your photos, comments and opinions. And then there are those who would ignore you. That might develop grudges. How dare they don’t hit that button for me. They must be really jealous of me. We expect something in return and when it doesn’t go that way, we get disappointed. We bully each other, abuse each other and ignore each other. I’d say disconnect for your own sanity.
• Paving the way to stalking!
C’mon, admit it. We all do stalk. Don’t kid yourself! We see that guy engaged to that girl, and right away; we check her profile and quickly judge her based on what we see. It’s such a shame that social media is built on feeding our ego like that. It scares me how anyone can easily google me and get into my brain. They can know all my likes, and dislikes, and get a piece of my mind! And here’s the fun part, you may get rejected or fired as an employee because of some opinions you carelessly shared online! I guess some people like being watched, but not me, I’m a bit of a private person.
• The overwhelming urge to share everything.
When you are addicted to social media, you get this urge to share everything. So you actually stop your real life to take a photo, check-in, or tweet about somthing. It’s no longer a spontaneous or a beautiful moment! The food you’re eating gets cold before you take a good photo of it. The time you spend with friends turns into a photo session. The trip you saved and looked forward to is barely about sightseeing, and more about check-ins and selfies. Weddings, events, everywhere you go; cameras are flashing around. You actually waste the time you’re supposed to be enjoying to share it with people who (most of the time) couldn’t care less. Now people even take selfies of themselves amidst horrible accidents. It’s getting really scary!
• We make it by faking it.
Facebook makes me angry sometimes. I don’t see why would I tell someone happy birthday on Facebook when we share a room. Why would I want to express my feelings to a friend, who I just saw and probably would see tomorrow, online.. in public? Why would Mother’s Day turn into a contest of love? Does this even happen in real life, or is it merely about grabbing attention and proving a point? Problems start when people expect that of you, to document feelings on Facebook or else they don’t exist.
You see people talking about their happiness, which may make others feel bad about their lives. But where is the truth? Is their life that happy? Or are they in real making up for the lack of happiness? Who’s really depressed and crying for help, and who is merely seeking attention? We are forced to interact with offensive people, people we don’t even like, though losing that source of hassle is one click away.
• You can do without it
I had that urge to share everything, but then I asked myself that simple question: why am I sharing this? And when I realized it was a force of habit mixed with validation seeking, I decided it had to stop! I’d be lying to claim this to be an absolute truth. I run a small business using all social media interfaces. I have meetings online using Facebook. But I’ve decided that it shouldn’t stop me from disconnecting. I created a friendless account just for work. And it worked just perfect for me.
I’m not saying we should completely disconnect, I personally don’t. I’m just saying you should detox every now and then. How many hours a day are you on Facebook? Try to be in control. Maybe delete the app, and only use it from desktop. Or sign out so it wouldn’t be an easy access. Or even deactivate every now and then. You don’t want technology ending up owning your life, you know.
In a nutshell, disconnecting was the best decision I’ve ever made. By the end of a whole week offline, I lost the urge to share every experience I’m having, and started enjoying the real life. And let me tell you I had a blast!
By Marwa Hasan