Comparison + Social Media

The mental effects of of scrolling through your feed.

"I need a witty caption"

Social media is bad for you that if you do it you are the devil... Kidding. I mostly try to write out advice or tell you stories of my past. I do like it that way, I for one am a type of person who does not like anyone telling me how to conduct my life. Even though I am twenty-four years young, the one crucial thing I learned just recently is. Do not let anyone tell you how to live your life. I have followed Christianity, I have followed Hedonism, I have followed a lot of teachings. Yes they have affected me, and I take a lot of what each doctrine teaches that go well with me. (Lets just say I like to cherry pick which suits my type of life). So in short, everything I write is either about how a certain thing that affected me or I am plainly giving the reader advice. Self-reliance is what I always try to strive for, you either take the advice or don't. (But always try to learn from people, because they may know something that you do not.)

Even though there is a lot of research on why social media is affecting negatively on us I just want to talk about two things. The need to be accepted, And the constant comparison. Again I always suggest doing your research on why to much social media is bad for us. I for one have limited the amount of time I go on social media because even without the information I have now. Already I saw the jealousy and despair I felt scrolling through my news feed.

Yes I still use Instagram, and yes I still have a Facebook, And from time to time I post things on my Snapchat. I still do very much enjoy these apps. Hell most of my readers are from my Instagram because that is the only place I have these writings advertised. I do slip up from time to time and subconsciously pick up my phone to check what is new. I once checked how much time I used my phone. Dear God it was almost ten hours, and half of it was spent on social media. I realized even when traveling I found myself more curious on what was going in the world rather then where I was. Something had to change.

About early this September I deleted all my social media off my phone. It was so hard because I realized I had all this free time that I did not know what to do with it. I struggled a lot in the beginning and I still do to this day. (Actually even today I spent about a hour looking through all three of my apps because I was bored). If I could compare my drinking problem and my social media problem on a scale, I would say they are pretty even on how they negatively affected me as a person. It has been about two weeks ago since I have put all the apps back in my phone, I have seen a lot of progress, but I see my old addiction coming back slowly.

Having a lot more free time I spent it trying things I always wanted to do, but never making the time to do it. I focused more on myself and dedicated a lot of time discovering who I was inside. I took some salsa classes, I dedicated a time to perfect my favorite dish, Fried Chicken. Though I consider myself a adequate cook, making fried chicken became a constant struggle for me. I always had it burnt on the outside and uncooked in the inside. I digress I started using the extra time to do the things I always wanted to do. I mean even this writing is a product of my extra time. Though I have a extremely small audience I find writing my thoughts out extremely therapeutic. And here is the funny part I hated writing (I mean can't you tell with my grammar errors and run-on sentences?) 

Okay why did I quit in the first place? Well first off I found that I needed to be accepted. It was always about how many likes I could get on a picture. How my witty caption would one up my imaginary rivalry with one of my followers. How I could show off how great my life is with amazing shots of scenery and me genuinely smiling. I cared how my social media perceived who I was, or how I built my image to who I thought I was. Because we all know we show the best parts of our life, we do not show our ugly sides. We show what we want the world to see. In a way sometimes we try to mislead our viewers into thinking we have our life in order. I mean maybe you do, but I know I do not have a lot of my life in order. I saw it clearly now, I saw that I even started believing my profile to be who I was and should be at all times. But in reality that is not the case I spend a lot of my time alone in my room. I am not completely miserable, I just accepted that my problem was I was posting things not because I genuinely liked the picture but because it was best suited to show what I thought everyone wanted to see. And yes I do enjoy photography, I still do enjoy getting getting likes, and also I still want to post pictures of open wide landscapes. But now I am in the mindset of being okay of not getting a lot of likes, and I now know that the pictures I post are merely just images that I want to show off to my followers. A picture only tells a little story of that moment in time. That picture will not define you.

Lastly why I deleted everything for a time. The constant comparison of me and others. I have a ongoing problem of comparing my life or my situation to other people. This is still a working progress and I slip up actually every day on this. Instagram and social media made it ten times worse. I found myself jealous half the time looking and creeping on peoples profiles. I have a lot of travel buddies who post pictures of themselves still traveling to exotic places. And that made me sad because I haven't been out of the country for about seven months now. I just saw the images and wished my life was as grand as what the images made it out to be. Yes I know we show our best selves. But still when you see something that you know you want in life it does hurt a bit. I feel like the best way to describe my agony is like this. I wanted to be as happy as where they were at, or even happier because I knew my life was not as gran dos as I made it out to be. In short I wanted to stop lying to myself. It was even worst when It was people I know and care about still. But now I made so much progress by disconnecting and realizing a lot of things about my behavior. In reality all the things I felt was because I made myself feel that way, it was no ones fault that this happened to me. It was me who made myself feel these things because I was insecure and jealous.

As of now it is still a struggle to not turn on my phone and check what is going on. But right now I try to limit my use to thirty minutes for each application and gradually trying to cut back on more time till I just use it maybe at least once a day. Listen I love looking at pictures and I genuinely am sometimes interested in peoples lives. But now I just go on to enjoy what people post and attempt not to compare myself to them. Also when I post a picture, now it will be because I like it and it is because I want you to see what I am up to at that specific moment. I am not devoid of problems I have many I will not share it, nor do I want anybodies sympathies on that matter. As of right now I just want to live my life centered and do the things I want to accomplish.

"Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who somebody is today." -Jordan Peterson 

-Andrew Paul Caasi

Reviews

[Relic]

After reading this, I think you have great potential as a writer. I'm no expert, but there are two things about your writing I think you need to work on. First, is the obvious grammar problems. Run-on sentences, comma problems, sentence structure and sounding uncommitted to what you're saying. (About early this September / It has been about two weeks ago / and I genuinely am sometimes interested in peoples lives. )

Secondly, try not to be too self-absorbed. I read this wanting to find out about social media and "The mental effects of of scrolling through your feed). Yes, you wrote the word 'of' twice. I found out about a part of your life instead.

This is not to say this is bad by any means. These are just suggestions from a reader of your work. Good luck, and I hope you get more reviews.

[CandydThoughts]

Thank you for your feedback and positive critiquing. As you can already tell I am pretty new at writing.
But I am still working on my writing style. I thought it would be best to give the only examples of things through my life. But I do see your point and will try to adjust my writing.