My social media story
March 2016. I was so addicted to Quora that I had an exam at 11:00 AM and at 6:00 AM rather than revising my concepts, was reading random stuff on Quora. That exam did not go so well (obviously). Fast forward, I was done with all my final exams, gotten into university and was preparing to leave home.
That was when a thought struck me. I was on Quora, Facebook, Twitter amongst a few other things which I do not even recall anymore. Of these all, I used Quora the most. My mother told me countless times to let go of this habit. It got so bad that if anytime any problem used to arise, I was straight on Quora asking about it rather than applying my own mind or even doing a simple internet search. This was not a fault with the site, it was with me.
So, I took a decision on a whim and deleted my account. Then, in the same moment, deleted Facebook and the other things except Twitter because I did not use it very much anyway.
From almost 6 hours a day on social media to suddenly zero. And common advice would be to let go bit by bit but that does not work for me. I am sporadic, which is one of my faults. And it was great! Lesser headaches and more time for real people.
Then in my third year of undergrad, we had to do a project which involved the use of Twitter data. Got onto Twitter and you can guess it, the next thing I knew I was spending most of my day on it. However, fast forward to my fourth year winter, still using a lot of Twitter but this time, rather than giving me pleasure, it was giving me pain.
This stemmed from the fact that I used to tax my brain to come up with something innovative and witty to reply to someone’s post, hoping someone would notice me. One time they did, and one of my replies got about 200 likes. But that was the moment of truth. The stars shone the same, food and water tasted the same. Then beat myself up thinking how I could let this happen to me. How did I get trapped in this absolutely illogical spiral of craving other people’s attention? (I still am in that spiral, but this time, not a care in the world whether anyone even reads this, brain dump perhaps?)
And this time, reduced my use, bit by bit. Told myself:”The amount of time you are trying to get people to notice you could be going to doing something productive. This will get you into a good college later on. Once you are able to, you will literally just have to put out your name, alongside the college you are attending and boom! You got more followers than you have right now, chasing after them.” This thinking was still faulty. Why does one even need followers?
Fast forward to today, in a new country, pursuing a course at a reputable institution and still not using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Quora. Some of the toxic people in my life are coaxing me to get onto Instagram because they simply cannot handle someone who is happy without social media. (Or at least is trying to stay away from it) I am still kind of addicted to YouTube, which is very detrimental for my eyes, my laptop, the environment and so I am surrounding myself with so much work that I do not get time to spend on Youtube because as soon as I find myself having a relaxing day without chores, I end up on Youtube.
Long story short, came a long way, but there is still a very very long way to go.
Thank you for reading my absolutely nonsensical, discursive second blog XD