A Letter to my Future Social Media Self

Dear Micah,

From the day I first activated my first social media account, I have been connected. More connected than I had ever been before. I was connected to my friends, my family, to the things going on around me and to the things going on around the world. Social media has always been about connecting more to those around you, for better or for worse. My first unofficial uses of social media were signing up for an email account in grade six, followed by a Facebook account in grade seven. Looking back now, I realize that a lot of the push for to create social media profiles, came from the fear of not being connected or fear of missing out (“FOMO”). I think that was and still is one of the biggest social media stressors that have affected me; the need to stay connected and “in the know”. In fact, I believe that if why many if not most people are constantly connected to social media, continuously refreshing their social media feeds to see if any new posts have showed up on their timeline. We crave the most amount of knowledge we can, as much as we can. I found that it took me quite a while, with a lot of thought, to realize why I constantly feel the need to connect to social media and what the stressors of social media that have deeply affected me are. It took me that realization to fully recognize and figure out how I can safely and healthily disconnect myself from social media. So, if you’re reading this now, I want you to know a few things about social media. Social media is an amazing tool, probably one of the greatest of our generation. It can be used in so many great ways, and you will find the very best ways to excel using it, by promoting yourself, your persona and your brand to the most accessible audience on the planet, the virtual world. Social media is great, but in no way is it everything. You will never find a more fulfilling connection than the ones you find in real life and not on the virtual world. That is where I believe social media shows one of it’s biggest weaknesses, it provides users with a false sense of connection and as a result, provides exaggerated meaning to intangible measures of currency. It’s all too easy to base your social media presence and posts off of the feedback you receive from it. Far too many social media users today are over obsessed about how many people saw their post and liked it, how many followers they can collect and the feedback they get from their posts and actions online. If there’s anything I’ve learned from using social media the better have of my teenage and adult life, it’s that you will get the most satisfaction and fulfillment out of your posts if you post them for yourself, post them because you want to share it, not because you want to see how many people care about you have to share. As well, try as hard as you can to take everything on social media with a grain of salt. Social media is great to connect and also to provide an escape, but it is still just as important to live your fullest life away from your screen. After all, the more time you spend looking into the virtual world, the more you miss in the reall world around you.

Good luck in your future social media endeavors.

Best regards,

-Micah