Social Media: A Curse Not a Blessing

The negative effects of social media have become a trite talking point, however it’s good to be reminded of them.

Most people who use Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok know that they are addicted to the app—they will even say it aloud periodically—yet we all seem to make little to no effort to get away from them. Social media is a pathogen to people and their lives, and while a little bit won’t kill you, it would probably be best to stay away from it entirely.

There is a strange phenomenon I’ve noticed over the years where people—primarily young women, but not exclusively—will have experiences in order to document them on social media, rather than live the experience and document it later as an after thought. Girls will plan a vacation solely to take pictures of that vacation. It isn’t that they want to be present and enjoy a place or an experience, instead, they only want to create an image for their followers. They will go to parties and concerts and only see their surroundings through the camera on their phones. Whether it be to look wealthy, or adventurous, or interesting, people go out of their way to take photos in a place they couldn’t care less about at best, and are miserable in at worst. An unhappy young woman will go on a trip to take pictures embellishing her life, look at Instagram and see other girls smiling off the coast of Greece, and become envious and depressed, not knowing that the other girls on Instagram are doing exactly what she’s doing.

Much of human happiness is based on our perceived position in a hierarchy, and looking at the world through the false lens of social media will inevitably put us all on the bottom of that hierarchy. There’s just too many people and too much bullshit. Online there’s always a richer guy or a prettier girl…in fact, there’s millions.

There’s too many people and way too many things out of your control. If you spend 20 minutes on Twitter, a sane man would come to the conclusion that the world is going to end today. Whether it be a new virus, Russian nukes, a civil war in America, a Chinese invasion, Neo Nazis, Antifa, or something else. It all points to imminent destruction. Yet, without Twitter your day seems to go on about the same as it did yesterday, and last week, and last month, and last year. Even if one of the disasters was imminent, what are you going to do about it? Will you singlehandedly stop the nukes from launching? Do you plan on escaping a new super-virus because you read a tweet about it? Being informed is a great thing, but I’ve found that the stuff pertinent to my own life will find it’s way to me without me reading the news or looking at Twitter.

Let’s do some math. If you spend two hours a day on social media, that’s 14 hours a week. That’s 60 hours a month. 730 hours a year. 30 full days of your year are spent scrolling Instagram. If you are paid $20 an hour, you are wasting $14,600 a year on Twitter. With an extra 730 hours a year how many books could you read? How much better shape could you be in? How much extra money could you make? How many skills could you acquire? How many adventures could you have with friends and family? How much longer could life, which many people complain is too short, how much longer could it seem?

In January 2020 I decided to get off of Twitter because it became apparent to me that those who ran Twitter, ran it with a destructive ideology that silenced any disagreement. A few months later I deleted my Snapchat because of it’s lack of utility. It became a platform for ads and news articles. In early 2021 I deleted my personal Instagram because it became a place for the distribution of political views by people who had not thought them through even for 10 minutes. As of now I only have my business Instagram which I keep off of my phone most of the time. I only download the app when I am planning on posting something and then I delete it again. I would say I spend a total of 2 hours a week on social media and if you ask me it’s 2 hours too much.