Now I’m not saying you should delete all apps and never go on social media again. (I think we can safely assume that not many people are capable of it). But I am suggesting that you take a break from social media once in a while.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to advise you to get off social media but there are reasons why I’m here repeating it with my own take.
If you want a quick summary of this article, here it is: social media is bad. Stay off, people!
Or, if you want a full in-depth look at why you should get off social media, read on!
Table of Contents
1. It gets you addicted
Social media works by constantly showing you clip after clip of interesting content that gets you hooked.
It used to be more difficult to get a dopamine rush. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in your body that make you feel good.
It is released when the reward center fires off in your brain. When you engage in sexual activity, shop, and smell cookies, for instance, dopamine is released in your brain.
Becoming too reliant on social media for your source of dopamine isn’t good which is why you should get off social media.
Social media shows you interesting videos and pictures one after another without stopping. It is designed to flood your brain with dopamine.
All of that overstimulation can make you addicted to social media.
You may find yourself grabbing your phone and opening the app without you meaning to.
You’re never a few minutes away from checking social media.
The days where I find myself checking social media more are typically the days when I don’t feel as good.
Do yourself a favor, practice a mini-experiment where you try not to check your phone, and every time you do so, you draw a line on a piece of paper. At the end of the day, count out how many lines there are on the paper.
You may be surprised by the amount of time you check social media every day. Sure, your phone may tell you how long you spent on social media but it doesn’t show you how many times you pick up your phone and open the app.
Each time you do, you’d need time to refocus so the total amount of time in the day where you were affected by social media is a lot more than what it says on your screen time.
All of that is time wasted.
Next, practice another experiment. Put your phone somewhere you can’t reach and reframe from checking social media I think you’ll notice how much happier and lighter you feel.
For this reason, I try not to check social media as much and just focus on the tasks at hand.
2. It distracts you from your goals
Checking social media so often can distract you from your goals. It really can.
I have goals I want to accomplish by the end of the year, do you have such goals too?
If you do, you may want to prevent yourself from checking social media so much.
Something may catch your eyes and just like that, 30 minutes go by without you noticing.
Maybe someone said something in the comment of a video that you disagree with and another 30 minutes go by.
By the time you close the app, an hour would’ve been gone and you’d still need a bit of time to adjust to focus on your current goal.
It’s like they know exactly what to show you to keep you on the app longer (and they do!). They do know what to show you. It’s all in the algorithm!
Every time you click on something, the algorithm takes note so they know what to show you next to keep you on the app longer.
If you want to be more productive, get off the apps, and place your phone on silent mode. Or, turn off all notifications (that’s what I do. I have no notification on my phone and it saves me a lot of time).
3. It makes you compare unnecessarily
Doesn’t matter whether you do so with or without your awareness, you will inevitably compare yourself with who you see on social media.
And you may find yourself being dissatisfied with something you otherwise wouldn’t have.
There’s a saying that the root cause of unhappiness comes from our need to compare with someone.
You see, there are many kids in Africa who are so poor that they struggle to get by on a daily basis yet many still find happiness in being alive and would happily kick around a deflated soccer ball.
This is because they have no one better to compare to. Everyone in the community is poor and has an equal amount of everything (which is nothing).
If you were to bring them to a rich first-world country such as the United States or South Korea and then send them back home, those poor kids will not find a deflated soccer ball fun anymore.
Just like that, social media expose you to a whole world of what’s out there and how other people “supposedly” live their lives (which isn’t all true but we’ll talk about that in the next few sections) and it makes us question whether what we have is enough.
All that constant comparison may also lead some to feel the need to enhance their bodies in specific ways because they want to look like who they see on social media (and that’s not always the reality).
4. It makes you depressed
Studies have shown that spending just 15 minutes on Facebook can make you feel:
- More depressed
- Less happy
- More anxious
It’s not necessarily that we’re jealous of those we see on social media (although that’s a very likely emotion for everyone to behold) but that seeing others having fun can make us realize what we aren’t doing — having fun.
All of a sudden, your schoolwork seems that much more boring. Your work also seems that much less exciting.
I mean would you rather be chilling on a beach or cooped up in your room studying/working? I think most of us would agree that going out there and exploring the world is more fun.
Not everyone’s life is filled with non-stop fun. There are times when people work their asses off late into the night and they don’t necessarily share the uglier side of life.
It gives the illusion that everyone is having the best life when that simply isn’t true but if we subscribe to the belief that everyone lives a certain way all the time, we may hold unrealistic standards to our own lives and become dismayed when reality falls short.
My most productive and best days are spent away from social media. I’d be completely engulfed in my work or be somewhere outside with friends.
Constantly checking social media would distract you from your goals and makes you feel like you are missing out (when you really aren’t).
This is what I tell myself when I’m working hard on my goals and see my friends having fun on social media, I saw it somewhere on the internet:
“You aren’t missing out on anything when you’re:
- Building your business
- Hitting the gym
- Building your knowledge
- Investing in yourself
You’re just creating the life most people will miss out on”.
When you aren’t feeling your best, log off social media, turn off notifications, and focus on what you have to do. This is the sure-fire way to feel better guaranteed.
5. What you see on social media isn’t real
Much of what we see on social media isn’t real.
I used to get very concerned thinking there was something wrong with my skin because my skin doesn’t look like the flawless skin I see on social media.
I didn’t use social media growing up although all my peers were doing it and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how they manage to have such great skin and take such good selfies when I finally opened an Instagram account later in life.
Here’s a reminder that what you see on social media isn’t always based on reality.
People don’t look that flawless in real life.
Those couples who seem to be so in love? Yea, that’s not always reality. Chris Watt killed his entire family and wife and everyone was shocked because they appeared to have the perfect marriage on camera.
Landon Clifford suicide despite having a great relationship with his wife and children on camera.
It’s always the best relationships on social media that are secretly the worst.
When we’re constantly exposed to picture-perfect lives of people all over the world at all times we may develop unhealthy expectations for ourselves and when it falls short, our self-esteem takes a hit.
Look at all the beautiful people on Instagram, seems like there is an endless supply of them? Now, go to your local mall and you’ll realize that good-looking people are much fewer in between.
Social media is an illusion. A lot of what we see just isn’t how it is. The best way to make sure it’s real? It’s to meet real people in real life. That’s the only way for you to determine reality.
6. It wastes your time
Social media is a tremendous waste of your time.
I often regret spending time on social media. “Just a quick look” I’d tell myself and I was sucked into an hour of endless scrolling and finished with me feeling empty.
When you do nothing all day, you may feel inevitably empty and aimless. It’s always good to have something to work on instead of spending all that time doing endless scrolls.
Close the app, tuck your phone away, and focus on what you set out to do. It’ll save you a lot of time.
7. It makes you depend on others’ approval
You think those “likes” mean nothing but they can be easily addicted to them and your effort turns into how can you get more ‘likes’ and comments?
I remember a friend messaging me asking if I could like her picture on Facebook and so I did but at the time I didn’t understand why she would ask me to do so. It just appeared like a waste of time for something that really has no value.
It wasn’t like she was graded on how many ‘likes’ she got and it wasn’t like she’d get paid for the amount of ‘likes’ either.
Most of us are addicted to getting approval from strangers on the internet. They become obsessed with how many ‘likes’, ‘comments’, and ‘followers’ they get and it can take a toll on one’s mental health.
Instead of living for yourself and living for the moment, you start to focus more on taking the best picture of your outing than actually enjoying the outing yourself.
It’s a dangerous road to go down in. One that I’m careful to avoid. I could start posting pictures of myself and gaining followers on social media now but I fear the consequences. What if I develop a need for validation from society?
Yea, I don’t see myself doing so anytime soon.
8. It makes you lose sight of what is important
So much of what is important can be blurred when your focus is on taking pictures rather than on experiencing the moment.
You will see yourself caring about things you otherwise wouldn’t have when you spend enough time on social media.
You see, I’ll never understand why anyone would be interested in celebrities. I mean you don’t know them personally why is there a need to follow every tiny change in their lives? Yet, that’s what I witness many do on social media.
When you find yourself caring about what some random celebrity wears to MetGala (I was forced to learn that this thing exists) that’s when you know you lose sight of what is important.
I can’t think of anything more boring than that. Well, perhaps watching paint dry but I would rather watch paint dry than watch someone I don’t know doing something that everyone is doing — existing, wearing clothes, breathing.
There is so much beyond what you’re bombarded by on social media and you can so easily lose track of the truly important matters.
9. It makes you easily influenced
Social media force-feed us information all the time. In all sorts of formats. Sometimes in a funny meme format that you digest and share without a second thought.
Your true opinion on things can be blurred and replaced by someone else’s opinion on the internet.
Whoever is responsible for the most major meme pages holds more influential power than most people think.
From what template they use, what they choose to share, what they choose to create, what words they decide to use, any negative or positive reference to anything or anybody, etc.
All of which can sway our opinion on matters and reduce our tolerance for certain matters as well.
I mean is pineapple pizza really that bad or is it only bad because the internet tells you so?
Spending too much time on social media can dissolve your true thoughts and behavior to be what others manipulate you to uphold.
It should be noted how important it is to preserve our own identity and ways of identifying with the world outside of social media influence.
10. It makes you adopt unfavorable characteristics
Believe it or not, we do pick up things we see and hear on social media, good or bad.
This may include some unfavorable characteristics such as:
- Narcissism
- Smugness
- Apathy for human suffering
- Flashy bragging behavior
All of these characteristics can implant themselves in our heads and comes out at our most vulnerable moments.
I used to be really afraid of acting like other people as a kid. Particularly certain girls in class who were in my mind, sassy, depressed, shrill, dramatic, unhappy, and mean.
The more you spend time around certain people, the more you adopt their characteristics without you realizing it. You may not notice yourself picking up certain traits but they may still get incorporated into your personality when you aren’t feeling your best.
Bonus: It warps your perception of the majority’s opinion
It’s easy to think most people think a certain way when it seems like everyone was saying something on social media.
In reality, groupthink likely took place and people chimed in despite not sharing the same sentiment.
There could also be a group of people who hold specific beliefs and you just so happen to stumble upon their lair while scrolling social media and it made you believe that’s how the majority operate.
To get a true sense of what is going on, you should talk to real people in real life.
In reality, there are a lot of sane people who don’t spend time arguing with people online or sharing their thoughts and thus their opinions don’t get heard.
What you see on social media are sometimes some of the worst things from some of the worst people.
Get out there and you’d realize how most people operate.
Final thought
There are certainly many reasons to get off social media once in a while.
If I were to check Instagram every few hours, trust me, I wouldn’t have gotten as much done today.
And I take my time very seriously. 🙂
