Social Media

My experiences of social media is not only that it is fake and superficial, it also affects your mental health negatively when using it for anything else but its original purpose (i.e. keeping in touch with friends).
It makes you feel like crap, decrease your life-quality, distrust people and becoming a worse version of yourself because:

-You easily compare yourself and your current situation to the highlight(s) of others' lives that you are seeing, thus thinking: "he/she has it all and my life sucks big time!". In fact, you aren't seeing anything that's going on behind the scenes but their posting of their highlights in life make you think their lives must be great all the time.

-The above reason makes you feel hopeless, jealous, envious, worthless, unwanted and almost incapable of doing anything about your current situation because no matter what you do, you will never have that great life he/she seems to be having in her/his posts.

-It makes you seek approval (from people you don't like anyway) for no valid reason but the approval itself. The number of likes you get (or don't get) makes you think that nothing I say or do is valued or appreciated by anyone, hence I must suck and no one cares about me. I am useless and unpopular because he/she gets 100+ like for only doing this or that.
-It makes you very narcissistic, entitled and self-centered since your constant approval seeking builds up a mentality where you see yourself as God's gift to this earth, on top of the world and think everyone should adapt to you and your way of life and be grateful for just being around you.
-The above reason makes you very unpleasant to be around since you rarely care about the people around you, their feelings, needs, and desires.
-It is a very time-consuming activity (some people spend hours a day on their SM-accounts) and one that makes you feel crappier the more you use it.
-You give up a lot of your private information on these SM-accounts and never really know in what hands that information might arrive.

-But, when you slowly realize that people's phoniness, narcissism, approval/attention-seeking, butt-kissing, dishonesty and superficiality is what makes up most of social media, you almost swallow the black pill immediately as you actually see it for what it is. Instead of swallowing that black pill, I suggest deleting (or almost deleting) your social media accounts and spend as little time as possible on them. You will slowly reconnect with the people around you and regain the joy of life and true relationships and intimacy with real people in the real world instead.

 

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Screen addiction is very real. Neuroimaging research shows excessive screen time damages the brain. I wish my parents knew this 30 years ago. Well no one knew where excessive screen time can lead. "[studies show] internet addiction is associated with structural and functional changes in brain regions involving emotional processing, executive attention, decision making, and cognitive control.” --research authors summarizing neuro-imaging findings in internet and gaming addiction (Lin & Zhou et al, 2012)".

From Psychology today > Gray Matters: Too Much Screen Time Damages the Brain

 

Social Media creates more problems than solves. Same with some dating apps. I find opposing views and tend to argue and feel stupid after because I just use it to vent anger. Instagram is far by the worst and is making me quite depressed, Facebook a bit but its alright when you just stick to the groups you like and stay in touch with friends. YouTube definitely not, while there may be the odd argument or two and some annoying content, I overall like YouTube and find you can avoid problems easily and find some great content. Reddit is the same. Forums have long been my favourite, most you join are specific and feel unique. Most users are half decent at least. You can't avoid arguments and annoying people, but other platforms are much better for avoiding it more often. I find Instagram to be VERY toxic if you ask me.

 

I recommend avoiding social media as much as possible. Its just as addictive and habit forming as porn, just as much time can be wasted there, and i find it way more stressful. Obviously the crap on social media is all BS. Luckily i was mature enough to realize that several years back and get off of that mess. Im 30 and it amuses me to see people my age and way older post their entire lives all on social media like anyone really cares what they are eating and that their boyfriend gave them flowers today. Its quite comical. The censorship, shadow banning, and political and religious biases by the leftest big tech elitists that run all the social media outlets is reason enough to avoid it.

 

Exactly, as a 16 year old I agree. Social Media is ruled by big leftist tech elitists as you mentioned. It is a tool used to control people and brainwash them. It starts off as addiction and then you eventually go with everything they say. People only want you to see what they want you to see, never reality. People should really shut most social media out of their lives. I have started doing that and now I just use forums, YouTube, reddit from time to time and Facebook to keep in touch with friends and forums who moved to FB groups.

 

Im on day 3 of my reboot and im thinkn i need to delete instagram because its like ever since i started my reboot everything i see is trying to trigger me to watch porn...i immediately just close it out...i cant give up now

 

Instagram does have A LOT of triggers on there. I had to stop using it!

 

Instagram was one of the only social media forms that held onto until a maybe 5 months ago when I finally let it go. For the reasons you mentioned. I was constantly being shown scantily clad women and twerking and all that kind of stuff that got me aroused and made me want to watch porn, and it just kept me repeating the cycle. Once i finally left instagram i was able to make progress to be pmo free

 

Personally I don’t find social media to be too much of a problem for me, I think reddit is pretty good and use snapchat to stay in contact with friends. I think instagram is pretty dumb though. It’s just girls posting provoking pictures and people trying to impress each other, it’s completely fake. I have personally unfollowed a lot of people, including those I know in person and have been going on it much less.

 

Social media is a tool. You can use it, or abuse it. It isn't inherently an evil thing as so many people are making it out to be.

 

I'd agree with the statement if you hadn't read Former Facebook VP says social media is destroying society with ‘dopamine-driven feedback loops
If former FB exec says they're F... with out brains then I believe they are F with our brains. We do 60 % of actions subconsciously. There are so may ways to exploit how our brains work and I don't doubt for a minute that all major social media companies strive to hook us up and then data mine and monetize on our behaviors to oblivion. It's their main business model after all. That's why I abandoned all social media except YT (but limited it's consumption only to few recovery, educational and professional channels).

 

I would guess that only a few percent of social media-users are using it constructively as it was originally intended to (I consider myself to that category btw) and hence those who are much happier with their lives compared to the remaining 95+% of abusers. You know almost instinctively that someone who post pictures, status-updates and events daily (about how great their lives are) belong to the category of users who are the least happy with their lives and I get this confirmed every single time I meet those people in real life. It is like those people haven't developed (or expanded their life perspectives) at all since the last time I saw them but continue along the same miserable and empty life-path that they portray to be so great on Fakebook or other (anti)social media apps. Hence the reason for why those people aren't in my social circle anymore.
There simply is no spiritual (or intellectual) depth in those people who never seem to have any worthwhile or fulfilling life-goals to strive for.
People who content and satisfied with themselves and their own lives do never seek the approval and validation of others. Neither in real life or in (anti)social media.

 

I've never used social media in my entire life. I only text and call. I don't regret it.

 

I've gotten rid of all my social media besides Snapchat which for the most part I only have close friends added on. To begin with, I only had Twitter and Instagram and I used the latter especially quite toxicly (checking out girls, seeking approval, etc), but I've since nuked both of them. I very rarely regret it, and when I do it's always my monkey brain craving those aforementioned highs - usually easily to dismiss and definitely not urges on the same level as porn.

I say if you don't have a REALLY good reason for keeping any social media platform (I use Snapchat to keep up with and organise things with friends, some of which I don't see regularly IRL) go for it and nuke it. Not once since I got rid of either Twitter or Instagram have I thought of a compelling, non-superficial reason to keep using them.

 

I'm gonna confess I used social media to check out and flirt with girls too, some I liked, most I didn't. I just realised I was too nice and got too desperate in a way. I never appreciated patience until now.

 

Exactly... It's like good old television all over again... They are a business, they are gonna do everything to drive consistent traffic towards them. As a consumer it's our responsibility to protect our interests because we can't expect them to do it for us. Once again, it's a tool that's easy to be abused and entices you to abuse it. But, it's not 100% evil and those who say so are escaping taking accountability for their own actions.

 

Yes, you are right. It's the user base (alongside obviously dubious tricks and tactics by the social media giants) who let's themselves be manipulated on puppet strings.

 

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