The Social Media Dilemma: Addiction or Past Time

 In today's day in age social media is probably the most viewed type of pages on the Internet next to video pages like you tube and Netflix. I myself only know a handful of people who don’t use some sort of social media, and most of them don’t use it because frankly they never learned to use computers as kids and have a hard time using them now. Many of us wake up to Facebook or Twitter to find out daily news or just to see how friends are doing, then as the day goes on maybe spend our time between classes or work on Tumblr or Instagram looking through post just to burn some time before checking back on Facebook at the end of the day to see whats new. At least, that’s usually how I use my social media, rather heavily I suppose. In any case, recently I was challenged to go 24 hours without social media to see if I could and how it would feel. Honestly I think I may do this anyway some days or at least go close to a day at some points so I didn’t think to much of the challenge but I was somewhat surprised at some points of my day during.

Facebook, and Tumblr are my main social media sites, with some Ifunny every once in a while for laughs. I dislike Instagram and Vine for how immature, sexualized, and down right dumb my generation and below seem on it. Twitter on the other hand I just don’t like anywhere near as much as Facebook, it seems more disconnected. So keeping in mind I only needed to avoid the first 3 sites, my day started out with me resisting checking my Facebook notifications which spent the day flashing at the very top of my phone screen taunting me to log on. Still in the beginning avoiding the 3 sites I use didn’t seem so tough. Around noon that day though, I started to feel it creeping up on me, the boredom. I ran out of stuff to watch on Netflix, I didn't have any video games to occupy me due to having beaten them all, and I was starting to consider logging on and quitting the challenge. In the end though a few of my cousins decided to go to a river nearby to hangout which got me through most of the day. When I got back home I was able to get through the rest of the night just texting with some of the people I usually talk to on Facebook. So in the end it didn’t turn out to be so bad going 24 hours without social media. The following are shots from the river I was at, I thought they looked really nice.

In the end I'm not sure how the experience makes me feel about social media, but I don’t think its as addicting as some people say, at least not to me. The thing is people like stuff that’s fun, and social media may not be laugh out loud rolling on the floor fun, but its an entertaining way to see what your friends and acquaintances are up to and get to some news throughout the day. Plus when you have a schedule like mine, where my friends are either living in other states and countries, or they're busy in school or working when I'm not, social media is a great way to feel like your with them for a while. Mostly I get this feeling through group chatting on Facebook and tagging each other on fun stuff that interests us there or on Tumblr. Sure we could text, or if the time is appropriate Skype, but if you cant meet up, sometimes you cant Skype either, and texting just isn’t as expressive as Facebook is honestly. But if you have the chance to see your friends in real life, or if you can get out of the house and do anything fun with anyone you like I think social media becomes redundant, like it was when I was at the river. It just depends on whether you can do something else to occupy yourself more enjoyably than being online, and if you cant I don't think theirs anything wrong with spending a day on a social media site, or even a few days. It's all about balancing out your life and time, if you feel like social media is the only fun thing you can do or the only place you know people, than you might have bigger issues in your life than just a social media addiction.