My Mobile Life

When i attended the “Mobile Reputations Collaborative Consumption in Sharing Economy” class at Panteion University by professor Betty Tsakarestou, i was told to observe my mobile life and realize how it affects my real life.

I didn’t think I was addicted to social media until I tried to quit it for a week. I say I tried to quit because I’m not entirely sure how successful my attempt was. You decide.

I initially thought the break would be easy because I’m “not even that active” on social — I’ve only posted about 50 photos on Instagram over the last year and a half, started to make a conscious effort on Tumblr, and still don’t feel totally comfortable on Snapchat. Although I enjoy keeping up with friends on social, I’m not one of those people who documents every second of their lives. Mainly, I use Facebook to communicate with friends I don’t text, and to stay in the loop with student activities that use Facebook Groups to post updates. I spend two hours at most per day on social media unless I’m chatting. If I don’t even use social media that much, how could I possibly go through withdrawal from it?

The last day of the week-break was a lot easier because I knew there was an end in sight. The rest of the week really made me think about how deeply ingrained in my life social media is, and what’s especially troubling is how it’s so normalized now that I don’t even realize how often I’m online. Going into the break, I thought that it would be easy because I don’t post that often — but I do engage with my friends’ content very much, and I think that sense of engagement and connection is what I would be missing.

While I’m at home and most of my friends are still out, I want to feel connected with them, so I felt isolated when I couldn’t enjoy that connection. While I won’t be taking another social media break anytime soon, it pushed me to call friends I don’t usually call, which was great — I needed to do that — and the break also reminded me that the feeling of connectedness on social media is kind of an illusion, because outside of the friend circle I actively communicate with, I’m just seeing — one-way — into the lives of people I don’t even speak to anymore. Social media is not going to tell me its life story, but it does have a purpose, and I’m okay with that.