The Social Media Effect

Are you old enough to remember life before social media? The days of long telephone cords and cordless phones. When you knew everyone’s number by heart and call waiting was the best thing in the world? When you actually went outside to enjoy life versus wasting hours scrolling to see pictures of people living for the gram. Don’t get me wrong, the invent of social media is one of the most amazing things that has happened in modern history, but is it really helping or hurting us?

People generally fall into a few categories when it comes to social media activity. Which one are you? Are you the kind of person who literally starts their day online? Are you logged into your social media accounts before you’ve taken a moment to express gratitude for being alive to see another day or wash your a$$? 

Or are you the professional kind? Online for the purpose of building a business, a brand or gaining exposure to build a platform to display your gifts and talents.

Maybe you’re the type who feels invested in the lives of celebrities. Ensuring that your favorite actor, artist or influencer sees your comment and likes it or responds. Some of y’all take it a step further and act like being the first comment on a celebs post is the equivalent to getting a reward. Just so you know, it makes you look weird.

Then we have the trolls. The ones who comment for the sole purpose of getting a reaction and raising people’s blood pressure. Most trolls have very few followers themselves, no posts, no profile pic and if they do it’s of an animal or some random google image. These are definitely the kind of people who have some deep-rooted insecurities, anger or could benefit from real life interaction because if you can keep up some mess online with a bunch of strangers, then I’m sure you need to get a life. 

You also have your thots and thirst traps. Women and men who just post hella pictures of themselves – usually of what they feel are their best physical attributes. While it appears as though these people are just shallow, vain, thirsty or desperately seeking attention, these accounts usually have a high following.

Whatever happened to just regular social interaction? You know, meeting people out, enjoying your lives without a phone attached to your hand or eyes locked on a screen. Seems like ancient history, but the world seemed to be a much more tolerable place when you weren’t able to see or hear the private thoughts of everyone.