As I was chillaxing in the family living room, my long interesting chat with my older brother was suddendly interrupted when he asked me “What is Snapchat?” I starred blank for a moment, not knowing where to start. Snapchat is a social media app that allows users and gives them the excuse to post every single detail of their daily life, calling it “My story”. While everyone seems to be totally fine with it, I began wondering where is social media really taking us?
Social media was phenomenal when it first started off with the purpose of reconnecting people from the past or from a distance. It was useful in the way it educated people about different world cultures but when social media starts replacing the real life of a human being, when you judge people’s lives based on their profiles on social media platforms, it becomes more harmful than useful.
People are now trying to constantly prove how content and satisfied they are with their lives by relentlessly sharing their happy moments on all social media platforms when in fact they have gotten more and more depressed as the social media boomed and flourished. People started comparing their lives to others when they’re really comparing it to something that is fake and does not really exist. I hate to sound cliché, but what happened to humanity?!
Many priceless things are becoming more and more extinct by the day: love, satisfaction and most importantly PRIVACY. The trouble is, people have no problem exposing all the little details of their life and actually bragging about it.
I asked several people if they shared my feelings about Snapchat, but to my astonishment, they tried to justify using it. Some people agreed it was thoughtful to share some pictures with your close friends and family especially if they lived abroad; others believed it was easier to chat with pictures so the person on the other end can get a real feel of your surroundings. However, there were ones who thought it was stupid, and utterly useless.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was up to the person to either use it the right way or abuse it and abuse themself respectively. “People reached a point where they judge a relationship by the number of a couple’s posts; they could go as far as assuming they left each other if they became less virtually active for a reason or another”- says Alia, 19 years old. If you feel that social media’s controlling your life to the extent that you feel obliged to post a photo or two everyday; that your usage has taken a new “addiction turn”, you should take a stand and actually stop it. Avoid using all social media platforms for a week and you may discover how unimportant it really is. There are far much more essential things in ‘real’ life. You shouldn’t worry about the things or people you’ll miss out on because whoever wants to reach you will have to make the effort to call you instead of texting you.
The next time you stretch your arms to reach for your phone and get hooked, ditch it and live in the present moment with the present people instead of constantly trying to prove your happiness online.
