The effects of social media regarding special occasions and social events

Do you ever those moments when you’re doing something cool and then either you or someone else goes “Wait, wait, wait, I gotta put this on my snap.” or, “Let me just get this real quick for the gram.”? I imagine you do and it’s not an uncommon occurrence Millennials-Gen Z, and sometimes Boomers, once they figure out how to use their devices, they love to take pictures of everything.

When this occurs however, sometimes the magic of the moment is lost all because we decide to record things to prove that we’re having so much fun. I say this as someone who is guilty of this. For example, when I did have Snapchat, I would make feature films in the club on my snap story to show my world how exciting my nights were, but I would always bin the project in the morning out of sheer embarrassment.

I have a lot of pictures from my days in secondary school, my time in sixth form and the first few years of uni. However, the pictures started decreasing because my fixation with sharing every dumb moment faded and I just thought, I can enjoy these moments in my life without instantly sharing them or even sharing them at all.

I have found that I have less and less pictures with my friends these days, not because I don’t like them, but because there’s less preoccupation with getting out our phones as much, unless we’re trying to locate one another or showing dumb memes. Once in a while we’ll decide to take a picture to look back on, but otherwise enjoying our times together is at the forefront, since we don’t get to do it as often as we used to.

Now I understand why we take pictures and it’s great to record our memories because our brains as great as they are, cannot retain everything. But sometimes we go into overkill and don’t allow ourselves to enjoy the pure great moments without our phones.

From concerts to weddings, rooms light up with flash photography, so much so, some artists have banned photography from their shows and guests at weddings have been asked not to record. When everyone becomes a photographer, the person or persons on the other side of the camera can get pretty overwhelmed, therefore, it’s easy to understand why audiences/guests are asked to ease off and let the paid photographer(s) do their thing.

There’s so much we share that goes into the abyss of social media and that’s the new normal. We share so much more because we’re able to, and that’s not a crime. We are privileged to be able to hold onto so much more of our lives than we could have dreamed of before. However, when we do too much, I feel that it takes away from our experiences.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever use your phone. It’s still okay to record your favourite artist singing your favourite song in concert, but don’t watch the whole concert through your screen, use those wonderful eyes of yours. If your friend does something cool, don’t ask them to do it again just for social media; same goes if you do something cool. Just live in the great moments without concerning yourself with whether it was captured or not.

Reminders to keep the phone in your pocket

1. Do it for the thrill, not for the gram.

2. If you didn’t get it on snap, did it still happen? Yes, yes it did.

3. Don’t go to a concert to get an arm ache from recording all night.

4. You’re not being paid to document this event, just chill out and enjoy it.

5. Trying to capture the best picture possible can take out enjoyment from the moment.

6. Not everyone likes a camera in their face, so stop annoying others.

7. We don’t need perfect pictures if the moment already is.