On Social Media
Greetings, internet peoples!
As I was in my 5:00 am meeting
today I was, well, multitasking, as you do, and somewhat browsing around
and stumble upon this article by Mister Davis Sparks, THE
GROWING TIDE AGAINST SOCIAL MEDIA.
As I was reading,
there was a lot of noting and "yepping". And there was one
piece of it that kind of stuck out and had me thinking for a bit.
One of my daughters is a high school teacher, and it only took her a few days of teaching to declare that the “biggest problem is TikTok. “ Her kids were addicted, and I don’t use that term lightly. Some could not stop watching videos during class until she took away their phones.
This touches or relates to a few things I think about often. I have two
girls, 5 and 7yo. Although they aren't quite into the social media trap,
yet, I often think about how the status of social media will be when,
inevitably, they'd get to it. The only thing that I can say they are
into, is Youtube. Yes, we are terrible parents, some may say, though, I
don't think I'd say they're addicted to it, they do play and do many
other things with their time but they do spend quite some time watching
things. They use my account so I am well aware of the stuff they watch.
Anyhow, the state of social media as it stands currently
scares me a little bit, and worries me, as a parent but again, I don't
know how all this will be in 5 to 7 years from now. So, in a way, I have
time not to worry but I do worry.
The second thing
is the TikTok addiction. I am proud to say that I have
never downloaded this app and I plan to, for as long as
I can manage, never download it. As I have might said somewhere one
time, I do not need another let's-get-high-on-dopamine kind of
app.
Here is where I confess, for me, Instagram
is my TikTok. I can spend so much time in that app just
watching reels, Steve Harvey's Family Feud clips, workout videos,
dancing chickens, and very, very inappropriate jokes clips. And
I hate myself for it, I know I have a problem, I have lost so many hours
of sleep to Insta. I have deleted the app from my phone, I have
deactivated my account, and still, I crawl back to it like an addict.
I just wish I could at least get rid of the damned explore tab
and just have my regular feed but of course, that's how they get your
attention, in the explorer tab. I also wish I had the self control to
ignore it, or better yet, close the damn thing for sure.