The Ups and Downs of Social Media

FOMO

FOMO in social media is kind-of stupid too. Like it's kind-of a pet peeve to me when people look through posts, stories (skip, because they don't actually care), etc, all because they feel like they have to.

I feel like in a way, so many of our priorities have gone astray and it's like, what are we even doing?

I kind-of feel like I have the same problem though, where it genuinely feels like I have to. But I fight against (and don't do said things). Which leads me to my next point, the love-hate relationship.

As you can read in the Past section, there's a lot of past I've had with social media. I would have it, I would delete it. So what are all the reasons for this back-and-forth?

Let's think about this chronologically. I'll start with reasons I originally deleted it, and why I downloaded it back.

Original deleting

• It was really bad for my mental health, but I also realized that's because I let it be. I felt forced to keep up with it, so I wasn't enjoying it. It felt like a chore.

  
  

Download back

(why I decided to download back)

• I wanted to be able to enjoy it (stop thinking of it as chore)

  I actually realizing some positive reasons in order to download it back again:

• Keep up with people you can't normally in real life

  • But it's also in general, a more fun way of keeping up with people (through pictures!)

• Fun in general, get to build yourself as a person/personality in this world; makes you feel like somebody. As a kid, I first got to get a breath of this when downloading it.

• Basically I felt as if I could be in control and control the way I use it, I could be stronger than just letting it control me/dictate me what to do. Additionally to this what convinced me is the actual reasons/positive reasons to download it back again.

So to reiterate, it took two things/reasons/realizations:

1. I can be in control

(and then positive preamble to download it back again): fun and can keep up with people + see what they're up + let people see what you're up to

Love-hate relationship:

With that being said, it's still a love-hate relationship; there are still things I hate about social media. Ultimately you can take the fact that I don't even have it downloaded right now and am staying away for an unprecedented amount of time as also, reason.

Love

I feel like I'm starting to get repetitive: but the things I enjoy about it are:

• Fun

• You exist

• You as a person

• Keep up with people

• (A fun way to express yourself as person and keep up with people)

Especially downloading it back, made me see it in a new light; there are still things I hate and given that I when I did download it back, I think I was like 17, so I was definitely old enough/smart enough to understand what I was doing and have reasons for it.

Also there's obviously stuff wrong with it, and it's not perfect, if I literally just temporarily deleted it.

Hate

• Still feels like a chore, and FOMO, though I fight against it

• It's a lot (draining)

  • Like, having it temporarily deleted feels so freeing

  • Even if, my reasons for deleting this time temporarily had nothing to do with the app itself really, but mostly mental health/ personal life issues/ life stuff outside of the app.

Youth

I feel like as a kid, social media is so cool. It's so interesting, new, and fascinating. The idea that: you can be connected to so many different people that you wouldn't normally be able inn real life. It's also exciting the idea of creating your own person/personality through pictures, captions, bio, stories, songs etc. Like I guess you just feel like you exist and it's nice. Then once you get older, you start to realize all the faults with it.

Past

My past with social media:

Snapchat: used to have it a long time ago; deleted since then; never downloaded it back again (I hate it)

TikTok: used to have it; deleted since then; never downloaded it back again (I always hated it and deleted it shortly after having it; it didn't last long at all. The time period that I had it also, I barely went on it cause I had such mixed feelings with the app and hated it. It was like the awakening of mental issues for me no joke). That will a topic for another blog post.

Instagram: used to have it a long time ago; then I deleted it; and DID in fact download it back again. I have had it ever since, pretty permanently. I have deleted it at times but I always knew it was temporary and for reasons that weren't the original reason for deleting (so that makes sense). Read the blog post: Reasons for deleting insta.