Social media addiction is something that unites people all over the world. No culture or religion can make people give up this new stimulant of the 21st century. It’s enough to go outside and see how people have turned into zombies, staring at their smartphone screens and not noticing the world around them. This is one of the main negative effects of social media.
But what happens if you try to give up this addiction? How will you feel, and how will your life change? Let’s see.
You’ll lose the stress of reacting to content
Social media is a story far from being about comfortable communication, it’s about being active. Many people try to stand out from the crowd with content and try to please everyone to get as much positive feedback as possible in the form of likes and comments. So even if you don’t notice it, when you post content, you subconsciously have a fear of negative reactions and try to smooth over the sharp edges to keep such feedback to a minimum.
By giving up social media, although you won’t stop feeling fear of other people’s reactions, at least the stress of expectation online will go away and only the more familiar offline will remain.
You’ll realize that most people don’t care about you
Social networks have created handy tools to keep track of other people’s data and react quickly to changes. Because of this, for example, there’s a false sense that no one cares about you. When it’s your birthday, people immediately start sending you birthday greetings in person. But if you turn off the display of the date of birth – and all, you see that congratulations will come in the best-case scenario from the people closest to you.
Social networks give the illusion that people really care about you, that they care because they like your posts, write comments, and repost. But it all works just so long as some sort of marketing ploy is in effect when you create content. Once you shut down your social networks, most people won’t even ask where you’ve gone. What’s more, they won’t even notice, because there are other accounts that take all their attention.
You’ll feel alone
As we said above, one of the main functions of social media is communication. It, unlike real life, knows no boundaries because you can talk to someone a thousand kilometers away from you, and to someone for whom the native language is different from yours.
Once you’ve kicked your social media addiction, you’ll find yourself feeling lonely at first. This is normal because many people have moved almost all of their social interactions to the internet. You will find that you have no one to talk to, and you will realize how deeply we are all embedded in messengers.
It’s easy to solve this problem by bringing communication back to the mainstream of real life. You can even visit social networks from time to time because this article is not about the complete rejection of the invention, but about its dependence.
By the way, this feeling of loneliness will have even a positive effect. The fact is that while we have something in abundance, we do not notice its merits. But once it’s gone, you realize what you really care about. Once you experience loneliness, you’ll realize who really matters to keep in touch with and who is just background noise.
You’ll have more time for self-development
The word self-development is already taking on a negative connotation because it is often associated with useless personal growth courses and similar stupefying effects. However, here, speaking of self-development, we mean the harmonious development of one’s personality, the growth of one’s intellect.
By renouncing excessive use of social networks and using them only when necessary, you will find that you have more time for the really important things. In contrast, in the clutches of this addiction, you are spinning in an extremely tightly wrapped wheel of interests that essentially causes you to degenerate.
This does not mean that social networks are only negative. Moreover, they bring a lot of interesting and useful things into our lives, if you know how to sort the content. But addiction to anything, no matter how right it is, will not lead to anything good.
You’ll free yourself from the constant craving for vivid emotions and become kinder
The problem with social media is that it provokes the creation of vivid dynamic content, which tends to consist of negativity. This is normal because the brain is primarily focused on negativity, as it is more important to assess potential risks than to enjoy something good.
Therefore, when you are addicted to social media, you don’t notice how you subconsciously reach for bright content, most often aimed at evoking negative emotions. When you give up this addiction, at first, you will get bored because the information cloud of useless but vivid information will dissolve, and with it goes the constant brain stimulation. But then you will see how stupefying that information field was and how much time and nerves you wasted on useless content.
In addition, by giving up the negative content that is an integral part of social media, you will be happier, because you won’t care about provocative comments under your post and other such things.
You’ll start enjoying events outside of social media to the fullest
Ask yourself, when was the last time you quietly read a book, watched a movie, or played a game without checking your social media updates at least every few minutes? You probably can’t remember, and even now, as you read this article, you’re distracted from time to time by pop-up messages about someone posting a new story or sending you a meme in a private message.
Being dependent on social media, you look at things outside of your smartphone with a kind of peripheral vision, that is, in the background. Can you recall in detail a walk in the park? It’s unlikely, because much of the time, you were looking at your smartphone and laughing at a funny video or reading an outrageous post about another traffic violator.
When you let go of that addiction, you will see the real world for what it really is. You’ll find something beautiful in it, something strange and ridiculous. In any case, you will see it not with your side-eye but with your gaze.
You will feel your perception of time change
Social media forces us to live at an even faster pace than we are used to in the big city. Outside of social media, everything seems slow and dull because, in reality, there is not the same concentration of diverse events as there is online. That is what attracts most people – the feeling that the world is rushing by at all speeds, that something important is happening every second. The brain, processing such a flow of information, also speeds up thinking, and the world offline already seems like a slow-motion picture.
By giving up this addiction, by not devouring content by the ton, but dosing it in the moments when it really matters to you, you will realize that you actually wasted your life in the useless pastime and that it is not the world that is so slow, but the internet that speeds it up.
You won’t fall out of society
Many people are afraid to give up the constant online only because they fear being out of society, falling off the radar of others, or being cut off from friends and colleagues. So they are forced to be active in social networks at first, and then later they get sucked in and can no longer imagine social life outside of it.
But by giving up this addiction, you won’t feel disconnected from society. You will still be able to communicate with people through live conversation and even the same messengers but use them only for immediate function. And you’ll also realize that once you let your phone out of your hands, you’re not suddenly alone in the middle of a clear field.
You will always be surrounded by people reaching for live communication, without the constant desire for dust in their eyes, those who care about the real thing, not glossy pictures and a hundred times overposted memes and inspirational posts.
