Hello there! Do you ever find yourself scrolling down the mindless feed on a social media platform, ignoring all responsibilities, and then feeling bad about it?
You are not alone, my friend. I’ve been a victim of this for almost all my life. Being born a GenZ, the Internet and social media have always been an integral part of my life, just like sending letters was a part of people’s lives 100 years ago. I am not getting into what you should do or what you shouldn’t, but these are some of my issues and solutions to those. Social Media is like that old Hindi saying,
“Pyaas lagi he lekin paani me zeher he, peete toh mar jate, nhi peete toh marjaate”
This translates to, “I’m thirsty and the water is poisoned, if I drink I die, if I don’t I die”
It’s an integral part but is the most destructive thing when one gets addicted to it, and to some extent, we are all addicted to it, so we don’t even realize it.
How do you spot an addict?
You see, they are doing a certain thing compulsively and constantly and can’t remain without it. You notice they are getting away from society while doing it. Like an alcoholic, they would drink more than everyone around them, be hungover so often, or pass out on a regular basis.
But what if you are in a society where everyone is constantly drinking and it’s normal? How do you spot an addict?
If everyone is passed out and is flexing their drinking capacity, the conversation shifts from alcoholism to who can drink more and still stay sober. That’s where we are with social media. We are addicted as hell to this, and while writing this, I sadly checked my phone four times for no apparent reason. Ya, I’m one of you guys.
You can’t spot an addiction if the whole society is addicted to it! The best way to find out if someone is addicted is to just place them in an uncomfortable situation where they can’t pull out their phone and start scrolling. You’ll find your answer.
I know there would be a lot of people saying it's a necessity and how a virtual presence is essentially necessary for growing personally and professionally. To some degree, I completely agree with this. Having a social presence is essential; that’s how I landed my current job.
But when you are addicted to essentials, how do you identify it, and, more importantly, how do you combat it?
If we are on the same page here, TLDR;
We are all addicted to our phones and social media.
Let’s understand the different platforms and levels of their addictions and how they make you feel. Let’s start with our favorite Instagram and how it changed how we eat food, travel, and enjoy our life.
Instagram is a great place to be. You can explore new art forms, see what your friends are up to, and post the best moments of your lives. It is the perfect recipe to make you feel worse on a bad day. When you see the best moments of people, you feel sad that you aren’t living your life to the fullest.
Also, if you don’t share or consume on Instagram, how will you talk with your friends? What will you talk about? The weather? Or the trending meme? Are we 80? Talking ideas and exploring growth!
Instagram is like an Adhar card for your social circles so that everyone can judge your best moments in life and you can do the same. If you are not on Instagram, what are you? Are you even human?
Memes are popularized by Instagram. You can’t always find time to show your friends what’s funny. Just bond over some meaningless humor and you have a friend for life. It happened to me! Another upside is that you stay in touch with way more friends than you usually can. I’m still in contact with my school friends via Instagram. I don’t chat daily, but we know what everyone is up to and can actually catch up a lot easily.
We are a weird generation. We lack social skills but are great on social media.
Everyone I know struggles with spending excessive time on Instagram. I mean, everyone! The doom scroll is best experienced on Instagram. You can never run out of things to watch. Also, Instagram pushes a lot of content your way that you like. I’m telling you, we are slowly becoming machines with habits formed on Instagram.
The best way to get off Instagram addiction is muting the notifications, putting a daily limit on the total usage of the app. For me, I tend to mute off Instagram when in need and have a 10-15 min limit on working days to stop me. You can just uninstall the app during the day install again in night. It’s upto you!
Moving onto the next best thing and a GenZ safe haven: Twitter.
Twitter is like a group discussion that everyone wants to be a part of but without any context. So it’s noise for the most part, with some good threads coming your way once in a while. Twitter for Web3 is the key place you’ll have to be to stay relevant. I found myself addicted to Twitter when I pulled out to see how many likes I got just after waking up. That’s sad, as I changed my first morning app from Instagram to Twitter.
To be honest, everyone either tweets in anger, to grow, or to make a joke. in a way to make yourself look cool. Everyone is funny on Twitter or way too cool. Being on Twitter with a good number of followers ensures that you made it. Add a blue tick and officially you can brag in front of your fellow GenZ about your greatness and your impact on this world.
We're sadder on Twitter because we see young people doing crazy things, and you feel like you're sitting at home, eating crap, and not making a difference. Also, you see people post about different health, wealth, and spiritual stuff that makes you want to do it and leave everything behind.
These growth hack folks and extremely meme-centric creators are all over the place on Twitter, as Twitter pushes such stuff, but to a limit.
The best thing about Twitter is that it doesn’t push extreme content in your face like Instagram. You have clear boundaries on who can see your feed, and also a plus is that you can mute growth hackers. I love Twitter in a way that it basically just shows you the tweets of people you follow. If you are like me, who is extremely conscious about our time on social media, follow fewer people.
I know it's offensive to not follow the folks who follow you. But to be honest, I don’t want to spend my thoughts on someone’s bad Uber ride and wonder what I can comment under it so I get likes. I usually mute people and don't follow as many as I can so that I can see some good tweets every now and then.
The problem with social platforms is that, because everyone uses them as a primary source of information, you have to be on them. I once left all social platforms, and to be honest, came out a different person with a better focus, but was an outcast as soon as I went into the real world.
In all honesty, our feed is a representation of our choices and what we either aspire to be or enjoy doing. If you don’t like what you see on your Twitter, it’s probably your choice and the algorithms are trying to show you that. Their only goal is to keep you hooked for more time, and they are successful in that. We are the fools who are scrolling.
I feel our generation struggles so much with consistency because we constantly find something new to try out. I don’t care what anyone does, but that’s what stops everyone from doing anything of value. If you want to be a writer, you’ll need to be able to articulate better. If you want to be a designer, you’ll need to understand shapes and color better.
That's what our parents always tried to teach us. You learn new things with time and repetition. But in a time where anyone can be anything in life, most of us can’t be ourselves in the end. The most difficult part is knowing when to stop and look internally.
I am starting a challenge that I borrowed from my good friend Piyush, for the next 21 days
3 hours of deep work (1.5 hours x 2)
10 pages of reading daily
30 min of physical activity
4 hours of social media (combined)
I would like to add one more step to this; daily writing down how it was and allowing yourself to feel bored for at least 15 minutes.
Hit me up and I’ll add you to a Discord server where all the interested folks will do the challenge!
PS: This is a serious attempt, so anyone consistently missing it would be kicked out. No hard feelings!
This has gone too big for a blog and will continue next week. Make sure you subscribe!