maddietheshark-blog

[maddietheshark-blog]

                                                                                             Madeline Videtto

                                                                               maddievidetto@gmail.com

                                               Social Media Usage

I decided to take away social media for a week. After this week, I didn’t realize how much time I spent on social media, and relied on it for fun, to pass time, and to talk to people. Fortunately, I was able to pick up shifts and I had a bunch of homework to finish, so I didn’t really have any free time to sit on my phone. On my breaks at work, I wanted to take it to the next level, and only used my phone to reply to messages rather than sitting on social media. This forced me to talk to my coworkers and actually have a conversation with them instead of just the basic “hey, what's up” conversation. I actually enjoyed this because as I get older, I find myself really bored with social media after a while, so I would clean, read my books, or do homework instead of scrolling through instagram. I go through phases of wanting to keep my social media and be really active on it, and give out my insta/youtube/twitter/snapchat to everyone and make as many friends as I can and interact with anyone and everyone. Other times, I want to delete everything and live life in the moment as much as possible without worrying about taking the perfect picture or thinking of the best caption for a picture. In a way, I kind of missed having social media as a backup if I got bored, but I think it was a good thing for me to not worry about who’s posting what, or who’s where. Throughout the week, I noticed whenever I already checked on social media for the day (I limited myself to an hour each day), I would get antsy and almost anxious. I read that people can develop depression and anxiety because of social media. (https://adaa.org/social-media-obsession). I’m a full-time college student, and a part-time associate, so I already tend to be pretty busy, but the times I have nothing going on, or if I’m simply waiting in line for a coffee, I’m always checking my phone to see what everyone’s up to. Without social media, I would look around and honestly got annoyed as seeing everyone on their phones. I saw people with friends, family, grandparents, and kids, and everyone had a phone in their face. It makes me wonder what it was like before social media and how people interacted in person with strangers, if they just went up to them in a random coffee shop, or give them a note. Out of curiosity, I searched people’s stories to see what it was like socializing before apps. I wanted to get people’s opinions other than family members or unnecessary comments from strangers when they see you check your phone once. In https://medium.com/art-for-lunch/what-was-life-like-before-social-media-8c4d745be1a9 , people share what life was social media took over the world. I’m not sure what other people my age think about social media. I know half of my friends have completely deactivated it and don’t plan on making new accounts anytime soon. The other half are completely for social media and still try desperately to get as many likes as possible. I think I’m at that weird age where people really hate social media or are addicted to it. I was definitely more on the addicted side. I would spend hours at night and I lost hours of sleep because I stayed on twitter for too long. This week for the assignment, I plugged my phone in on the other side of the room so I wouldn’t be tempted to check on it throughout the night. Not going to lie, it was pretty tough just laying in bed staring at nothing, but I fell asleep quick and got a good nights rest. I didn’t feel as dead as I usually do when I wake up. Apparently it’s the new generation to not get any sleep and to spend all night on social media. According to https://bigthink.com/david-ryan-polgar/are-tech-saturated-bedrooms-leading-to-poor-performing-sleepy-students, over a third of young people wake up to check/respond to messages. I really enjoyed this assignment, and the nights rest I’ve been getting.