My mom has always been very strict when it comes to cellphones and social media. I did not have my own phone until I was in middle school and it was only to call my parents, it had no texting and it was just a generic flip phone. I did not receive my truly own phone until I was in high school. It was this cool little black phone and the screen would flip sideways so it looked like a TV. I finally had texting but no internet. When I was first in High school the big social media craze was myspace but it did not last very long. And then all of a sudden facebook happened and then twitter and then instagram. My senior year of high school is when I finally got involved in social media.
When I first got Facebook it had a negative impact on me. I was on it all the time. But worse it made me feel bad about myself. I am and have always been extremely shy. So it has been difficult to make friends. And I did not realize how unpopular I was until I joined Facebook. Everyone had hundreds of friends. And I could barely get to fifty. When other people posted things they would have hundreds of likes and many comments. And well as for me maybe my two friends would like the things I posted. I began to place my self worth on how many Facebook friends I had and how many likes I got. This had a very negative impact on my self confidence and self worth.
It took me a long time to realize the wrong I was doing. Why did I count on social media so much to make me feel good? My eyes finally opened and I realized that social media is not important. And even though I did not have a lot of "Facebook friends" I had a few really good real life friends. Social media can be used as an escape and I saw it first hand. When things were not going good for me, posting and getting likes made me feel like I was important. But its a deadly cycle because getting likes helped but not getting a lot of likes or wanting more likes would leave me feeling worse in the end. I still have social media but my view on it is completely different. I use it to see pictures my family or friends post. I have been able to stay connected and reconnect with friends, I like to watch funny videos or get news stories. I think the problem with social media is that people do not realize that it's not important to get many likes and have many friends, it shouldn't be an escape, we cannot forget about our real life. And that was a very important lesson for me to learn.
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