Social media.
I have pretty much left social networking sites besides Twitter. And occasionally chatting on discord.
Social media can pretty much be describe as toxic. There are may reasons to it.
1. It is loaded with ads.
Ads are products of consumerism. One cannot be constantly told your need all these products and still be content with their lives.
People nowadays think they need a diamond on their wedding rings all thanks to advertisements. It has become a norm to use rings with diamonds to propose. Advertisements are more powerful than we think.
2. They are distractions
Social networking sites have notifications turned on on default. Notifications are a form of distraction. It creates a sense of urgency, for us to look at the newest comment on our posts or the new like on our tweet.
In reality, it would not hurt if you reply to your friend's comment hours later when you are done with your work.
It is tempting, to open up an SNS app and check how many likes you have got, how many comments you have got, what post have people posted since last time you checked. Unpredictable rewards are more rewarding than if you knew what you would get opening those applications.
3. It is too easy to get overwhelmed by information and stimulus
Scrolling through timelines and homepages is easy. It is easy to get addicted to the flow of brightly colored pictures when you can do perfectly fine without them.
Passively receiving information from social media makes us less happy. When a person is looking at pictures of people's best version of themselves, they think to themselves why am I not as wealthy, good looking, own as much great things etc.
It was 'fun' because it does not require and thinking while doing it. Our brains get stimulated and excited by pictures and sounds, often that is mistaken as 'fun'. That is probably the reason we have access to all of the knowledge you can imagine on our phones and still choose to watch cat videos.
4. Fear of missing out
The more you scroll through pictures of your friend's fancy meals and places that they have visited, without you, the more you feel left out. The more you feel lonely.
Think to yourself, do I absolutely need to look into every acquiesces' lives and their shitposts?
When I had hundreds of friends on Facebook I unfollowed everyone except for 5, 6 people who I truly care about. And I sometimes get annoyed by seeing pictures of their food.
There are two reasons that I follow somebody, it is because I care about them or their posts are interesting. Some of the brands and friends you are following are neither of those.
5. The 'need' for self exposure
When we post on social media, we feel accomplished and better about ourselves. We have this need because it is a form of socializing, and feeds into our ego.
The right amount of self exposure on the internet is hard to determine. We may have a tweet that goes completely against you boss' values or would not like to show to our grandmother. We may accidentally post a picture that shows the view outside of our homes and therefore expose where we live to everyone. It is dangerous because anyone could have so much information about you from scrolling through your profile page. What about a creep, or a stalker? A potential love interest?
My thought is, think to yourself if you can show this to your boss, grandmother and the creep who masturbate to your SNS profile. If the answer is yes, that is pretty much safe to post.
The above points that I have made is enough to get me off Facebook. And all the personal data concerns, user experience that is completely shit, etc.
There are reasons to keep them, too. For work, and for actively engaging socialization on it.
Socializing is the goal of being on social media platforms after all.
Posting a picture on the internet is far more easy than telling each and every one of your friends that you moved. Have a partner. Anything.
They can comment on it and share their thoughts. They can check your profile and catch up whenever they feel like it.
It is a more controlled and easy way to communicate, for people like me, who dislike socializing in general.
The more we choose to check on a specific friend, instead of mindlessly scrolling through the trending page, the more intentional and productive we are using social media.
