Why I Quit Social Media | and How It Changed My Life

A couple years ago I stopped using most of my social media apps and deleted a lot of them. These included Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and other social platforms. While it was hard to get used to not having those social media platforms, It was a tremendously big relief long term. At first, it was difficult to tell people that I did not use social media anymore on social occasions, and often I could not talk about the latest news and trends. However, these cons did not weigh up to the great advantages of reducing social media usage. In this article I will talk about benefits, intentions, and my thoughts about the future of social media.

Why I Quit Social Media | Additional spare time

The average social media user spends about two hours per day on social media apps. Some people spend even more than that amount on it, and when I stopped using social media, I got a lot of additional free time to do things you want to do and have a positive impact on my life and my identity. This could be anything like reading more, working on your business or excersising. I can also start building up more patience to do hard things, because social media has a big impact on my attention span. When I stopped using social media, I started spending more time on exercising, reading, meditating, and making music, to name a few things. Right now, I don’t even miss using social media.

Less anxiety and jealousy

Another negative effect of using social media, is that it creates a feeling of anxiety and jealousy when you see other people’s pictures and big results. When you stop using social media, you have less people to feel jealous about, and you start working on yourself more. This means that you feel more confident, happy, and become better at socializing. This last point is a big thing, because these days a lot of people feel lonely and have difficult times when trying to socialize with other people because of their insecurities. I feel this too sometimes, because as of now I am 21 years old and also grew up in a digital era. But we all have the power to gain control over it and start communicating in a spontaneous and healthy way again. The great thing about social media and digitalization is that we can see our errors and become aware of the up- and downsides of it.

How we could use Social media in the future

In my opinion, the best way to deal with social media now is to stop using it for a while, and see if it helps you. I don’t think that deleting your profiles is a wise thing to do, because social media also has a lot of benefits, like selling your products, services and sharing knowledge to other people. But since there are no rules or regulations for social media usage, and the effects of it on our society are huge, this is a wise decision for the moment. In the future, there could measurements including an age limit, and time frames in which you are allowed to use social media. These things could help us to take back control over it. I think we social media should work with us, not against us.

Read this article to form new habits that have a positive impact.

I hope you enjoyed this article, have a nice day,

Mart Bergsma

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