Social media for idiots?

I look up from my desk in our 20 minute lunch break to see everyone is staring at their phones. No real life social interaction but trying to please others through the screens that sit before them. Glued to their hands and eyes, there is no way their phones can be parted from them. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat. A social mantra that is scrolled through, checked and repeated again. When did everyone get so obsessed with social media? It controls us like drugs control an addict. We need it to function. We need it to survive. It’s as essential as bread and water. Why? Because we’re a part of a generation where your identity lies within social media. Without it, you are non-existent. We need to remember every tiny detail of our lives in fear that we will forget. That we will be forgotten. We’re perched on the end of a pier fishing for compliments and building a persona that isn’t necessarily who we really are. We hide behind our screens like it’s part of our armour. We hide because they protect us from the reality of the outside world. When everything is falling apart around us, we can rely on the social world within our phones to make us feel better, as though there is something stable and consistent that we can turn to.

Although we are addicted to this social online world, it leaves us to question: Is social media for idiots? That would be admitting that 90% of our generation (including myself) are stupid and socially inept to some extent. But like Darwin theorised, as our world and habitat changes, it forces us to adapt and therefore we are merely just following the crowd, following trends. But the question of ‘what would happen if social media didn’t exist?’ arises. It’s hard to picture a functioning world without it. People would be forced to socially interact in every situation. We wouldn’t stay in touch with as many friends as we do now. Lost through the years as people move on from their former life to another. We wouldn’t be able to project our thoughts and in turn, listen to other ways of thinking. We wouldn’t see or share pictures and videos that pin point the moments in life that are worth remembering. Our self-worth and appreciation would slowly disintegrate and we wouldn’t know why or how to deal with it. The world I have grown up in would be unrecognisable and my generation wouldn’t be able to adapt. Wouldn’t be able to conform. Wouldn’t be able to survive.

So what do we do? I feel uncomfortable knowing that I am addicted to social media, that I need it on an hourly basis to feel good about myself. But I don’t want to change. I don’t want to give it up because I need it. It’s a generational guilty pleasure that doesn’t make anyone feel guilty anymore. I wish I could find a happy medium where I occasionally check up on what people are doing and in turn post as well. But then I find myself four hours later scrolling through the same feed pretending that I haven’t seen or read it before. We are robots. We are idiots obsessed with superficial apps and websites. We can’t break out of the cycle because we love it. We love the attention. We love the controversy. It’s what we live for. Does it matter? No. Not at all. It does not impact our lives massively. Social media is the thing we do on the side. We think it’s insignificant and doesn’t mean anything. But it does. In the long run we have come to realise and admit that we are all obsessed with it and can’t help ourselves. There won’t be change anytime soon because we don’t want it to. We’re happy in our social media bubble, liking and sharing posts like it’s nothing. We do it unconsciously because it’s an essential part of our daily lives.

This concludes that social media is neither good nor bad. It doesn’t help or hinder our lives. We rely on it and as sad as that seems, without it we wouldn’t function.