Me and Social Media

This is the story of my struggles of not interacting with social media within 24 hours. I expected  the challenge to be easy since I felt like I don't use social media that much. The hardest part would be to not watch youtube, podcasts and other videos like tutorials. I would say that I watch youtube the most but just a couple of hours (probably much more) a day and I do browse other forms of social media. There is not any specific meaning for browsing so much and the biggest minus is that  my wrists hurt for holding my phone. I don't use Instagram, Snapchat or other social media forms so actively as I used to. I didn’t expect that Whatsapp wouldn't be a problem either.

I don't usually get so many messages anymore. Rarely even from group chats but I am sure that covid has an effect on them. Discord has been more in use when my friends recently made a group there even though I don't speak there much or any other group chats. I just don't want to or I don't have anything to say. I find texting quite boring and can’t get any meaning for it. I texted a lot more before but now I prefer calls or meeting up, the problem here is also that meeting up with this situation: our friend group is used to meeting up with a big group, so that's also off the list.

To the actual CHALLENGE!

I slept a lot. I didn’t have motivation to wake up. Usually I wake myself up by scrolling through some social media feed, now I couldn't so I slept four extra hours, not a good sign. Even while making breakfast I blast some videos from youtube but I couldn't do that either so I decided to listen to Spotify and find some podcasts from there. I chose a podcast from Aalto university but It wasn't the mood I was after. We drew memes with Lenny remembering some golden moments on social media. 

Here are some memes we drew >>

PIKACHU

https://youtu.be/jec0Miye3gg

GIORNO AND MARIO 

https://youtu.be/NP24UQwybjQ

BINGUS
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CGnHombpV8g/?igshid=gb6ij5oi1gim

I started to watch the social dilemma documentary, I freaked out. The scene where they send messages trying to get a reaction from the voodoo like user, I STARTED TO GET MESSAGES I had to check where the messages came from. It was from whatsapp, and it was quite important and I ordered Lenny to answer them. I lost the challenge but I still tried till the end. At 22.00 I lost it completely and started to use social media normally.

While watching the documentary and trying to be off of social media was the hardest. The beginning of the day I didn’t even have the internet on so I could resist the urge. I needed the internet for spotify and DUOLINGO. To me the funny thing was that I was worried about my streak in duolingo. The one way how the platforms try to keep the users on their platform, but I reasoned that it was more for my motivation to study german. I couldn’t even watch tutorials on youtube and I was really annoyed since I wanted to do my tasks and tutorials are so handy. I tried to search for other forms than tutorials found on Youtube but it didn't really work for me because reading is hard haha, my concentration is way off when reading. I wonder if my concentration is that bad because I am a gen z (baby) or from general concentration problems.

I didn’t enjoy staying off social media platforms since they are tools for me to study and find inspiration. It would have been a completely different situation if I didn’t have school to do then I wouldn't really mind. I could really also dump any other social media form but Youtube is number one. At least number one  tool to learn more, although being without whatsapp would be hard since people do use it the most to contact. It is goofy that I haven’t been able to delete Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram because I have a genuine fear of missing out what's happening but at the same time looking at posts gives me the fomo, but then people do message me through them. It’s a tricky loophole and I have been tricked, I am a sheep.