Hooked on Hashtags

In today’s day and age, it’s difficult to escape the virtual world. Between the large number of social media platforms and apps, it’s easy to get wrapped up in your glowing screen instead of what’s right in front of you.

I have a love hate relationship with social media. Being a communications student, it’s an incredibly wonderful thing to have, but at the same time I find people are becoming too obsessed with it.

I started using social media in 2012 as a way to communicate with my friends after school. I would update my statuses with things I thought my virtual friends would care about like my obsession with Zac Efron, and would stay up late using messenger to chat because I didn’t have a cellphone and the landline wasn’t “cool” anymore.

I remember the night I signed up for Facebook. I was 13 and I thought I was one of the coolest kids on the block because my mom finally let me get it. But when I look back, I wish she would have stopped me. I mean, it’s not like I posted anything close to what young girls are posting nowadays, but I wasted so many valuable moments because I was too busy staring at a screen rather than playing outside. Compared to today though, 13 was old to join the online world.

It makes me sad when I see young kids glued to their iPhones. I worry about the impulsive decisions they make because they don’t know any different, and the valuable real life experiences they continue to miss out on. It still shocks me when I see a kid in elementary school with a nicer phone than what I have.

I worry about the younger generations because they will never be able to see what a life without technology and media looks like. I got my first cellphone when I was 16 and it was a pretty big deal. And no it wasn’t an iPhone, it was a good old pink Sanyo and the full keyboard was the key selling feature.

Today, people obsess over their online brand to the point where it takes over their entire life. There are several Instagram accounts out there where you can tell the people in the photos live double lives, one of which is spent behind a filter.

I’m not even going to try and lie, because I’m guilty of spending the majority of my day looking at my phone or computer screen. It’s become a habit of mine to check my phone every free second I have, and I’m not proud of it. It’s sad, but I honestly don’t know if I would be able to leave my home comfortably without my phone.

The past couple weeks, I have been trying to set small goals to help me stop depending so much on my phone. I have started leaving my phone in my backpack when I’m on the bus (there are actually many interesting folks on transit), allowing myself to check Instagram a limit of three times a day, and not making my phone the first thing I look at in the morning  and last thing I look at before I go to sleep.

I challenge you to try and spend less time looking at a screen. Start by setting small goals to get you started, and then try leaving your phone at home when you go out. You’ll be amazed by the little things happening in real time that you overlooked before.