When I read the blogs of my peers, I noticed that a few wrote about the addiction of social media. Social media is so embedded in our daily lives that living without it can seems like an impossible thing to do. I noticed myself that I am quite an addict myself if I’m completely honest. When I wake up I scroll through Instagram followed by Facebook.
Taking a break from social media or quiting social media all together has some benefits. Like any other addiction, social media addiction has some real conseuqences that can affect your life quite some bit. The fact people tend to compare themselves is one of them. This can lead to low self esteem because what is on social media is a unrealistic reality. People tend to brush up their content like photos or stories to make it appear like their lives are awesome all of the time. However, this is ofcourse not the case.
Furthermore, FOMO plays a big role in generating problems that find their roots in the excessive use of social media. The fear of missing out can drive people crazy. It relates to comparing yourself to others too.
I know there are more problems regarding social media but I choose to adress these two because they affect me the most personally. I once tried to take a complete break from social media for one week. I thought this would be easy.. it wasn’t! I did however noticed that I had more time to do other things and I was more in the moment. This meant I had more time. Time I had otherwise spent on comparing myself or just on useless scrolling. I did use whatsapp during the break I took because whatsapp is only there for communication and not really for posting or other type of social media activities.
The real problem actually came from things like university. The break was during my first week at university and a lot of important information was actually shared on Facebook! This together with the need for a Facebook account to log in to a lot of websites meant that life without Facebook is actually very difficult. This meant that your addiction sometimes is caused, or at least supported by external factors. It is therfore also the responsibility of for example universities to ensure that people can choose not to use social media and still participate in university. See it like being a vegetarian. I noticed the options for vegetarians have increased over the last few years. They are able to choose non-meat dishes at restaurants and I even think that at a lot of universities it is even obligated that people have the possibility to choose a vegetarian dish. This could also work for people that made the choice not to use social media.
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