What Social Media COSTS YOU

 

You’re young, free, the world is your oyster –and you’ve got a great circle of loved ones around you. But you are firmly feeling lonely? Yes. The ‘L’ word.  Think back my friend, when was it that you started to even feel this way? Can’t remember but now that you think about it it’s been an awfully long time? That’s what they all say.

Many of us feel this way in fact, but we keep it closer to our hearts than necessary. So no one kind of speaks about it. I know it may seem like the biggest cringe crushing thing ever but if we just wore our hearts on our sleeves and admitted or shown that we want real communication or relationship things could only improve for humanity.

When we are young and find ourselves in this great big muck of a mess we really don’t know what to do with ourselves or who to even admit it to. We all have at least one social media account. And we naively believe that it is our way of keeping in touch with our close friends, family and communicating with the rest of the world so that we feel connected. But are we really connected? I think we were far more connected back then than today. Social media is our key to all sorts of doors really, it literally unlocks the entire internet at the tips of your fingers. There are just so many ways of ‘connecting’ with each other on the internet and they really have made it all so appealing and easy for us that we are blinded by this. We need to stop.

 

When did you start feeling this way? I am pretty sure you won’t be able to put a finger on it. The truth is it’s a gradual process that we won’t notice until… well, here we are. We notice it only until it is too late and it’s not quite the same as it used to be. We realise that we go out less, that the next minute we look at the time its been quite an embarrassingly long time to have been on Instagram or facebook. The truth is we have been accustomed to an addiction. Now this is not new. You’re just new to the the gang. In fact, even blogging can be labelled as an internet addiction.

Some of the signs of an internet addiction, which you might be surprised to be able to relate to are:

• Sense of preoccupation of the internet. That means reflecting back on the previous activity we were engrossed in on the internet. Anticipating what we will want to do the next time we go online.
• Finding satisfaction after the duration of long hours on the internet.
• A repetition of failing to control our use of reducing our time/going on the internet, or stopping altogether.
• Negative mental affects from having cut down on our usage of the internet. This can be depression, cranky, moody behaviour and restlessness.
• Finding an escape from our problems in life or feeling guilt, unhappiness is dependent on going on the internet.

 

Luckily it can be treated with therapy by seeing your doctor.

I just find it sad how life has come to this now. Our younger generation now also have had an impact with the technologies of today as well as us. We ought to take some of the blame if we are the ones to lead youngsters and be role models. I have seen children be completely absorbed in these things. If you pay attention to the advertisements on children’s channels you would be shocked to see the toys they are now presenting to our children. Toy phones, laptops, digital cameras? Are these the things our children want to play with? As for online can you believe that they now have children’s social networking sites??  They even have apps. Apps! It just goes to show, how they feel parents and adults will assist children to interact with gadgets and online activities. These things are not a game in any shape or form. Children should be enjoying their childhood with other children of their own age, in actual friendships. We can always do a better job in everything and one of them is this. Rightfully generations should evolve into better people than us. How can we watch them be equally absorbed, if not more, in the internet?

Back on to the adult topic we ourselves have had things cost us. We might not be close to those who we once use to be close to. We might find ourselves not being able to even meet up with our close ones because, hey, there’s messaging. There is even facetime. Meeting up becomes less frequent and relationships become a one to one with a stranger. Our photographs become purposes for the Instagram and Facebook etc, and remain as digital forms, most lacking proof of our relationship with a human at all. Instead we gather striking photos of our breakfast, our mugs and of the food we are about to tuck into…it’s a shame too that they have all sorts of online sites for dating even. But never friends. Making friends has become an awkward and tricky thing to do especially as an adult. Now if you have someone talk to you, you feel weirded out by the stranger, or struggle to judge if they have an ulterior motive. There is no social app that really you can go to to just make a buddy. Or have someone to talk to. Even if there is Facebook which is ideally for making friends strangers remain strangers because making friends has truly become a complicated situation. How easy little children must have it where all they do is ask if they could join in too and they’ve instantly gained a friend…

But I think the time has come. You should turn to the person next to who has been there all this time (but you was too engrossed in reading this to notice). Say ‘Hi. It’s a pleasure to meet you’, and smile. ‘My name is…’ and off you go. (If you find this the tricky part it means you are out of practice. Now break the ice and make a friend, good luck!).

 

If anyone follows through with this please comment and let me know how it went!