The 21st century has bought us many things – cinnamon challenge, selfies, loom bands, the word ‘fleeky’ and finally the evolution of social media.
I can proudly and embarrassingly state that I’ve survived through most of the social media trends. Dated right back from Piczo, Hi5, Myspace, Bebo – remember the old giving ‘love’ to your close pals? Cringe. – MSN messenger, Facebook, Twitter, and finally Instagram. We invest and sacrifice so much of our valuable time into updating our status and telling Facebook ‘What’s on our mind’ and uploading yet another selfie on Instagram with our carefully hand chosen filter that will guarantee to enhance our look by making us light skinned when taking the photo strategically by the sunlight. It is a complete deception, in editing our self image and showing solely our best features, we are giving a false perception of ourselves whilst cutting out the emotion.
Even worse we have the need to boost our egos by relying on how many people have liked our photos, and how many positive comments people post in order to confirm that we are attractive in any sort. We ensure that the number of followers on our Instagram account must always outweigh the number of people we are following in order to make us look ‘popular.’ Are we that inadequate of our own self worth that we need the reassurance of other people – worse, people that we do not even know? Do people even care if you’ve just had a wild night out clubbing down Broad St? I highly doubt it.
Isn’t it ironic that it is labelled social media but it is anything but social? We shut our doors in complete isolation, utter desolation in order to open up our laptops and update our statuses on these ‘social’ networking sites. Although you may brag of having 727 friends on Facebook, how many could you honestly say you talk to daily? How many of them would you go to if you were in trouble or in need of some advice?
The aim of social media was originally surrounded by the entertainment philosophy: a time passer for when one was bored. But over the years it has evolved to consume our lives, a constant tweet updating the outside world of what we are eating, where we are going, vent our emotions, all the unnecessary details. It has become our own online diary.
I don’t think we actually know how much time we waste every day by devoting these crucial minutes and hours of our lives online. This is to the extent that we end up missing out on the crucial aspects of the present, the refining moments and memories that we will once look back at – that time that will never come back to us. Is it really worth it, throwing away these chunks of minutes just to see whether that girl you despise of has updated her instagram with yet another revealing photo that will gain around 100 likes per minute? I know I’d happily pass.
Now I’m not totally slacking social media. I mean in its own right it is a big part of 21st century marketing and these have made many companies and bloggers successful. But all in all we live in an anti social world, a technological addicted society, and a self absorbed bubble where our lives are defined by our online presence and profiles.
So put your mobile phone away, glance away from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Don’t miss out on a chance just because you were too busy looking down. Look up. Live life the real way.
The video above replicates the message perfectly. Credit to Gary Turk.
Gary Turk, ‘Look Up’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY
