So lately I've had some thoughts. I'll try to make sense of them here.
First off, social media. Holy. This is a big one for me right now. I think since December, I decided that social media was just honestly killing me as a person. For years and years and years, I thought of myself as an incredibly energetic, happy, alive, bubbly person. But now all I am is a phone screen full of text messages and likes. I honestly do not deny this at all, and truly I am working on it every single day.
The thing is, I love social media. It's such a beautiful concept to me, that we can share some of our thoughts and feelings in a way that not everyone has to see it or enjoy it, but those that want to interact can. It's also a nice way for people too shy to speak up to be able to say things to others around them. Overall, a truly fascinating, amazing way to share and to keep in touch with those that you don't see that often.
But like. Destructive.
Let's look at this for a moment. Once upon a time in my youth, I was kind of the coolest. Like, in my head I was, because in my head, you know what I was doing? Constantly playing out a million different fantasy worlds where I was a princess or maybe a knight or maybe a spy. I read at least a book a week (sometimes a book a day) and like I just fueled my brain with material. Serious, great, beneficial material.
Now what do I do? I wake up and boom, instant thing is check Instagram. This is fine, because I don't follow many people so it takes me like five minutes at the most. And besides, I'm seeing what my friends are up to. But then I have to go to Twitter, and scroll all through my feed or else I feel like I'm seriously missing something. 15 minutes guys. 15 minutes of me lying in my bed, reading about the Kardashians and reading about people's inner thoughts that are sometimes too random to even be funny. Then I have Snapchat, Timehop, countdowns, Facebook, YouTube...the list goes on. By the time I have finished my morning social media scrolling, it is around 45 minutes of my day, sometimes even an hour.
Let's stop and think about this, comparing it to my life before I had a smartphone. What did I do in the morning? I got up, made my bed, ate breakfast, maybe watched a couple cartoons. Then I would clean up and go out and start to play. Actually if we are being serious I would just go outside and play with my brothers and then escape when it got too 'manly' for me and would go to read my book.
BUT STILL.
I have an app on my phone that counts how long I spend on it. Not like how long I am using it (so like music doesn't count) but how much screen time there is. I HAVE NEVER MADE IT UNDER THREE HOURS. NEVER. unless I cheat. So. yes.
Three hours, guys. Do we want to think about all the things that we can do in three hours? Yeah, me neither. I honestly hate thinking about it. So many times I think to myself, "I don't have enough time to do that, I am just SO busy!"
Hi. Um. Remember that hour at the beginning of my day where I just lay in bed? Yeah, okay just thought I might bring that back up.
So like it wastes a lot of time, but also, how much do we miss? I mean we have all seen all of those slam poetry videos that inspire us to 'look up' and not be on our phones so much because we miss so much. But um yeah. We really do. Every time I'm on the bus or train, I sit on my phone and look at things that I've already seen or read before, but I do it just because I'm bored.
Last time I was on a train, I sat across from a girl who didn't have headphones and didn't look down at her phone one time. I had my headphones in and barely looked up. I literally knew that she wanted to talk. Like, I could feel it. She got my attention to show me cool things on the ride and she even offered me cake (probably not a wise choice, but I ate the cake, which may have had drugs in it, but it was LEMON POUND CAKE OKAY) and just I could tell she was so lonely that even a stranger would have been nice to talk to. But you know what was better in my eyes? Reading articles about Taylor Swift that I had already read that morning, and then selecting the next song on my playlist in hopes that I would drown her out.
Some days I try really hard. Another train example. One time I got on the train and sat by this elderly lady. She talked to me for an hour and a half about her family and asked me about mine. Another family came and sat by us and we all talked and had such an amazing time. I loved it, even though I tell myself I hate talking to people I don't know. It was so fun to me, and for the rest of the day I just felt friendlier and happier.
At a family activity recently I put down my phone and barely touched it. Instead, I played with my younger cousins and talked to my family members. At the end of the day, my phone battery was at like 60%, not even kidding. And even though I had missed all the status updates and Snapchat stories, you know what? I was totally and completely okay. Happier, even.
So why. Why the heck do I do that to myself?
If I knew, that would be awesome.
Every morning I tell myself, "okay, today instead of going through Twitter while you eat breakfast (I'm way too hyperactive to just sit and eat breakfast, I have to be doing something haha), read a book." Yeah that lasts like two seconds until I tell myself, "Well, see, I just poured the milk on my cereal and the book is in the other room and my phone is in my hand, so..." Excuses are my favorite things, and I am fully aware of this.
I wish this ended with a really cool solution on how we can all work on putting down our phones and pay attention to the world around us. If I could do that, that would be stupendous (ten bonus points to the person that caught that movie reference). All I'm saying is, I want to be more aware of my life and what I do, and I think that social media is really helping me go the opposite direction. They may be smartphones, but like seriously, I think they're making us dumber. And more boring. And less creative. Machines shouldn't have to think for us.
Since this post is a mile and a half long, I'll save my other thoughts for another day :) Have a splendid day!
