UNITED STATES—I have to pose an honest question to you: do you get tired of social media? I feel like the world we live in nowadays is completely dictated around social media outlets like Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, Vine, the list goes on and on. There seems to be this programmed notion that every single thing we do in life has to be broadcast over social media and I cannot fathom why. What the hell happened from 2003 to the present where life is now dictated by social media versus our focus simply on living life?
Oh, I know, its Facebook, but if you ask most people today, Facebook is for old people. You go out of town; you have to post it on social media. If you were to ask me, that is a major mistake. Why? When you broadcast your information to the masses you can make yourself a massive target for crime. Some people are starting to realize that, others not so much.
My point is that we are so focused on capturing something on video or taking the perfect picture, we lose the focus of living in the moment. That is something I want to highlight, why don’t more of us just LIVE IN THE MOMENT! I cannot fully describe this except for saying to not give a crap what anyone else thinks. We are a very self-conscious society; we get inside our own heads and do a bit of self-monitoring. Some of you might be asking what I mean by self-monitoring and I’m glad that you asked.
This was a term that I earned during my undergraduate studies as a psychology student. I had never thought I did much self-monitoring in the everyday world, but I’m a high self-monitor. I adapt my behavior and how I want others to perceive me based on the company that I am in. The more comfortable I am with people the more relaxed and myself I would argue that I am. When I’m in a new environment and people who are foreign to me, I’m more aware of how others receive me.
This has become our life; we care too much what others think and how we will be perceived because of social media. You may not think social media impacts your life, but it does. Why? Even if you don’t have social media platforms (I’ll raise my hand because I’m one of those individuals), there are countless others who have social media and multiple outlets with that. The ability to snap a picture or to capture a video and share it online can get them a ton of press or attention. Hence, it’s all about being LIKED or NOTICED or gaining a bit of PUBLICITY.
Social media is a platform to communicate with people; no one is going to remember how many followers or likes you have when you die. I mean I remember seeing my cousins take pictures of my grandmother’s body at her wake and it left me stunned. It almost seemed like an invasion of space because I had never seen such a thing before. It was rude and disrespectful if you ask me. Like show a bit of class and stop focusing so much on capturing something. We’re mourning, focus on family and not on capturing a freaking picture.
Social media dictates the life of those who live by it, and those who don’t live on social media sometimes have their lives dictated by the thought of something embarrassing being captured on social media. We cannot escape it and I wish for just 7 days, only 7 days we can eliminate social media on all fronts. I would die trying to figure out how people would respond to not being able to post or tweet something or focus their attention on where someone else is and what they’re posting in what they deem an exotic location.
