UNITED STATES—Social media 20 years ago was something that was starting its development, you had Facebook and a few others like Myspace coming to light. Today, the number of social media platforms that you can utilize to entertain are endless from X (it’s Twitter and I don’t care what Elon Musk renamed it), Snap Chat, Tik Tok, Vimeo, Instagram, the list goes on and on America. This is important because it brings us to our question of the hour, are you spending too much time on social media?
I spend time on social media, but I know people who spend all day and all night on it. No, I’m not referring to an hour or two, I am referring to hours on social media. Why is this a problem? It raises the question of productivity. Could that time be better used to do other things? You could be investing that time to actually spend it with family, you could invest time in a possible side hustle to bring in extra income or hopefully begin the launch of your own business. You could clean the home, organize clothing, develop a new craft or passion, the list goes on and on.
As adults we already know social media is bad for our kids because it consumes a considerable amount of their time. So much to the point they will dismiss doing homework, going outdoors, spending time with family or doing household chores. As a parent, you sometimes have to rip the cellphone or mobile device from their hands to get them out of that social media trance.
The one baffling aspect of social media is that it feels like people just want to have this historical log of everything they have done. Look, I’m eating here, look I went here, look, here is what I’m doing, look, I got this, and sometimes I want to say WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR OVERALL PURPOSE? Are you bragging about your lifestyle? Are you wanting people to see what you’re doing all day and any given time?
It raises that vital question as to how are you actually living in the moment if you’re so worried about putting out to the world what you’re doing on a 24/7 loop? You’re not, we are so gripped by the number of likes and views to a video or picture, it is more about vanity than anything. We all want our 15 minutes of fame and for many individals, they will do anything, which poses a larger question, authenticity.
Just because something appears on social media doesn’t mean it is legit. People can stage a situation and then post it on social media to get a reaction. That’s why you should not be using social media as a resource to rely on for news because you don’t know that everything that is posted on those social media platforms to be legit. Did you verify what you’re seeing before you shared that video with everyone you know who shared it with everyone they know?
Look at what happened when Tik Tok went down for like 12 hours. Imagine if every single social media platform shut down for a day, for a week, hell for a month. What the hell would the American public do? This country would likely go to hell because so many people have become dependent on social media. The one thing I’ve discovered is that a vast majority of the videos and content you find on social media is a load of crap, and so many consumers are just consuming loads of crap on a daily basis, and what a shame.
Written By Zoe Mitchell
