Why is social media bad? How to quit it?

While growing up, nobody tells you how social media will ruin your life, you are just told to avoid it, but they understand that we are curious people and we love trying out new things. The sad thing is even when people tell us, the exact reasons of how it will f*ck up our lives, we tend to overlook, because of course we are risk takers too.

But nobody understands that we aren't rebels, or at certain times we are, however, the actual truth is we fall in the trap of the lies that the world has served us, we fall for the perfect lives of the people we see on the internet and we wish for a life like that. But we fail to realize that what is on the internet is not always true.

Life, before social media :-

While I was growing up, the thing that bothered me the most was, not having the idea of who I actually was. I couldn’t figure out things, I have had lost myself couple of times over the most trivial of issues. Okay let me start from the very beginning, I was a good student, in the eye of everyone, and I used to get respectable grades, being subject topper and what not. But life is not always good.

Life, when I joined social media :-

Then, when I got in 10^th grade, things started to change, I felt this urge to keep up with my so called “friends”, so I joined all the social media, at the age of 15. And that, my mates, was my biggest mistake, I desperately started to compare myself with the people I didn’t even care about, or the ones I didn’t even know, but what is the most funny thing about this, is that, their comments and compliments actually started to bother me. For instance, if I uploaded a picture, thinking I looked cute but if no one commented on it, I used to become uncertain, if I truly was pretty. My self confidence dropped so low that you couldn’t even imagine. But this was not the only problem, I faced, there were tons of more. By the time I was in 11^th grade, my marks were nothing like before, my father became all the more worried, but I never talked to anyone about my problems. My relation with my Mamma and dad, worsened, because I had distanced my self from everyone, the only life I was living was the virtual one. Constantly checking my phone to see, if someone texted me or liked my picture, and when none of that happened I felt as if no one cared about me, which was far from true.

The problems that followed -

 I had transformed into this girl, who was obsessed with social media. My talks always consisted of a chunk of it, for instance, in a world where problems like that of career, money, education existed, my problems began and ended, at the fact, “he did not text me”, “he did not like my post!”, “he commented on her picture?”, “why is he following her?” and what not, I became this arrogant and nosy bitch that I hated.

I started to hang out with certain people just to seem cool on social media. I lost my real friends. I was in a big group, but it didn’t feel right. But what sucked more was that, I wasn’t ready to accept it. Fights and hate comments became a normal thing. I gradually, bit by bit lost my mental peace and then myself, to a point, where my parents couldn’t even believe that I was the same girl that I was two years ago.

How my life took a turn -

But then, a thing of utter uncertainty happened, and I was devastated, I blocked that particular person from all of my social media, but that did not hinder him from appearing in my feed, because we still had mutual friends.

The only thing that seemed like a band-aid on this bruise of mine, was getting rid of social media. And so, I did the very obvious, I deactivated all my accounts and uninstalled snapchat. I haven’t re-activated any of my accounts, till date, and honestly, I don’t see a point, why I should. And should I tell you, how amazing my life has been, for these 6 months? I mean, I am more happy, my self confidence has increased enormously, I have a positive body image and oh sweet Lord, I have so much time, I mean how do I spend it!

Quitting social media was one of the wisest decisions I could’ve ever made, although, I haven’t abandoned snapchat completely, which I surely will in the near future, once I am done backing up all my pictures in my cell phone. The very initial thoughts I had, before going through this social media cleansing was, “I will lose contact, with all these people, if I erase my account” but honestly, if being in somebody’s following list is the only way to strike up a conversation, then fuck that. If you’re important to someone and that person is important to you, then you’ll surely have each other’s number. Learn to prioritize the people in your life. It is a fact that, if you make yourself, so much available for somebody, you’ll lose your value.

I mean, if your absence doesn’t affect somebody, your presence wouldn’t ever. So, Prioritize in order to be prioritized.