It’s humorous when our generation learns that to besocialis to download every social media forum there is: Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. As a side-note – people still use Facebook – it isn’t that ancient.
In my teenage days, to not be on any social media was deemed uncool because it was an addictive craze, no victims were left behind in their invasion to androids and iPhones; no-one wanted to feel left out because not having access to such apps left you feeling excluded due to your group of friends making group chats and conversing there instead of in person.
Social media does the job in keeping us informed, but our generation and the younger generations are voluntarily allowing themselves to be fabricated by sugar-coated stories, celebrity drama based off rumours and magazine covers that influence our minds to think how we should look.
For instance, the Tommy Fury fight with Jake Paul spiked dozens of articles online of comments being made my Tommy’s opponent or how his girlfriend, Molly-Mae, ‘staged’ his welcome home. We fed into it. Love Island drama; a show that captures millions of viewers attention yet the contestants can’t find love in the real world with their looks and physique? We feed into it even after they leave the villa. In reality, it’s our own lives we should be worrying about.
Quite frankly, it’s refreshing to walk into book shops and being surrounded by books, getting away from the general population of people looking down at a tiny screen. We’re setting a terrible example for our future generations because we’re so dependant on our devices.
I remember being the type of child who went to bed with a book, not a phone or a tablet. We’re living in a world where we’re reading less, creating less and working less because of the painful addiction to social media.
It’s a case of memes fuelling our dopamine. Funny enough, they rhyme and the words can be found inside one another; dopam(eme)ine. Except for the slight variation between the sounding letters of mand n.
The famous Tiktok app offers users the experience to create their own videos using lip-sync sounds as well as a variety of other creation tools. People create there. Kindles can be bought, audio books and e-books. People read there.
Work is the one exception because offices need computers and staff need access to their workplace’s online forum to help customers. Do we want to get to the stage where our great-great-grandchildren won’t know what an actual book looks like? Will playing outside resort to children sitting on the curb, all their heads bowed on their phones instead of racing each other on bikes and scooters?
The world has its alterations over time, and it’s encouraged we change with the world, but not at the cost we lose what was most important to us once upon a time. Society needs to train their brains to live without their phones, to live without going on social media every two minutes even if its just for a few minutes, or hours.
Dopamine needs to be produced from our brains while going to cafes and socialising, taking a walk on the beach with no shoes so you can feel the sand between your toes, making memories with those who you share your life with because those are the things that matter.
Getting into a relationship with a device that’ll outlive a human is not an app you want to download. Why don’t we all, put down the media apps and play a game called life, installing time is zero and instead of it taking up space on your SD card, it’ll update your memory bank forever.
