The Progression Of Social Media

Social media without a doubt has changed the way we as humans think, feel and act. It has directed the world onto a completely different path than one would ever have even imagined achieving. Not only has it created a direct link between cities, countries and continents but has allowed for a hands-free, human-free world to exist right beneath us. Whether we realise it or not we have all fallen into this new day and age, living in a technologically driven world, where humans have more power behind a screen than they do away from it.

It almost feels like there is an element of life between no social media and the amount of social media we have today that we have just missed. Somehow it whizzed by and disappeared as if it never existed before. Think about it, try to imagine a world completely opposite to the one you live in now, how would you choose to communicate with your friends, how would you occupy your evenings, how would you link up with distant family members and long lost cousins, how would you remember your mates birthday, tell a stranger you like their outfit, pass the time waiting for the trains, planes and buses? Seems impossible right! That is because it is now ingrained in our minds and thus we lose touch with “reality” because virtually, reality is distorted.

The thing about social media and the world wide web, if you will, is that it’s addictive, similar to snorting cocaine or smoking cigarettes, once you start you simply cannot stop. It’s not an addiction that is associated with being a bad thing and it’s not an addiction that causes pain but ironically it is the addiction that causes a whole lot of distance. Whilst the innovation behind its development is extraordinary and praiseworthy, the exploitation of its use is detrimental. Look I am not telling you to spend less time on your phone, not to use social media and that not everything you see online is real, no that is not going to help the problem, nothing will help the problem, social media is here, social media is staying and social media will continue to grow and expand. It’s not about getting rid of it or minimizing it in your own personal use but rather learning how to live with it. It is like a foreign object in the body, the body will reject it and try to remove it in any way shape or form, however, this one is permanent and the biggest cure to the disease is adaptation.

In some way, you could look at it like sharing a space with another creature, almost like an extraterritorial species or something along those lines. This is because social media has been granted the power to make us feel certain emotions, change our behaviours and open up a piece of ourselves we may feel scared to do directly in front of another human being. Why is that? Why are we so fascinated with a completely fake distortion of reality and why is it equally comfortable to share our space with it? As confusing as it is the answer doesn’t stray far from the general understanding of human nature. We are fascinated by the lives of others, each searching for a deeper meaning and a broader understanding of what life is and why we live in it. We like to look at others features so we can compare the difference in our own, we like to see what others do in their days so we can justify we are doing enough and we like to pretend we’re something that we’re not because the freedom to do so is exhilarating. It’s the basic psychology of the human mind accompanied by the historically repeating theme of greed that gives social media a higher power than humans on planet earth.

The problem is, simply, we’re in too deep and quite frankly there is absolutely no way out. It is part of our lives just like the invention of the first toaster, cell phone and the car. We are now living with a powerful foreign object that has completely taken people under its spell. I tend to think of it like this, let’s say you wanted to lean back and not fall and you have a pillar made out of bricks on the one side and lightweight plastic on the other if you choose to fall against the brick pillar your chances of falling are less but if you choose the lightweight plastic youre almost certain of falling and taking the pillar down with you. In this case, social media can be referred to as lightweight plastic, it will stand strong until it is hit by a weight that is far greater than its own. If social media, practically an invisible working and providing object, falls, we as humans are all going down with it, yet we choose to rely on the lightweight plastic day in and day out.

You're probably reading this article thinking that I am completely slandering social media and actively trying to spread the word about how bad it is, but I’m not. I use it just as much as the rest of you. I also scroll through my Instagram feed, get sucked into Tik Tok and stalk my ex-boyfriend sisters, boyfriend's cousin’s mom on Facebook. No, social media is great and I love wasting approximately one day a week of my life embedded in my phone. I am just trying to bring light to the importance of understanding its existence, because it is about to take off into a much larger and greater aspect of humanity and that little control we once had is bound to disappear. Don’t forget about the space between reality and virtual reality and don’t neglect the objects subject to physical touch that surrounds you. It’s not about being away from your phone and having a long-distance relationship with social media, but rather acknowledging the foreign object and remembering that it is only as powerful as we allow it to be. If you keep your feet steady on the ground and your mind in the tiny sliver of space between these two totally contradicting worlds you will be the master of your own power.