Social Media:  The addictive habits we do not want to admit – Part 2

We are living in the Information Age.  Everywhere we go, information is hustling for our attention.  We literally are surrounded with information overload all day long.  Social media does not help matters.  We have Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Emails and goodness know what else.  Then these apps are programmed to bleep, vibrate or grab our attention that there is a notifications pending.

Stop asking me to play Candy Crush!

So if we are not disciplined, we know when someone has liked or commented our post (or keep checking to see why not or how many!).  We know who is doing a cover page selfie, who is asking us to play Candy Crush, or is hanging out at an airport and all that palaver.  We can tell what our old schoolmates (whom we lost touch with over five decades ago), are now up to, if they ever married their childhood sweetheart and how much they have grown horizontally.  We know who is in and out of a relationship.

What is the point of cryptic posts?

As if these things extends my life span!  Then we have the ‘is feeling sad’ or something cryptic.  Then the resulting bombardment of ‘Oh honey what’s up?’  ‘Cheer up sweetie’ and ‘Sending you love angels!’ and ‘What’s the matter?’, and all that stuff.  Have we become attention post seekers all of a sudden?  Then you feel obliged that if you don’t comment, then you are the mean and uncaring one.

Well, thank God for the Holy Spirit.  I have personally decided to pack my bags with all this social media stuff and limit and I mean limit, my use of it.  I am heading for sunnier social media climates.  Will spill more of that later.

We are only finding an excuse to hang on…!

Lest I omit in all this barrage, statistics anyway proves that these social media do not bring in the much needed leads and popularities that we use as our excuse to stay glued to them.  In fact, one big company that I subscribe to, said they were deleting their Facebook page because they discovered that the page did not do much in terms of quality clients.  As much as they had 100 of thousands of likes, it was not worth the spin.  That got me.  So, one may have 1,000 likes but if we are honest, how many of those likes truly care about what you do?   The truth is we are only massaging our ego.  And before I leave this point, I saw a cartoon joke of someone attending a funeral with only about 3 or 4 people in the congregation and the remark was ‘He had 2000 friends on Facebook, I was expecting a bigger turnout!’

How many of our Facebook friends really even ‘know’ you?

The truth how much are we closely knit with our Facebook friends.  Some secretly unlike us in groups and pages.  Yes, just go and see who is no longer your friend or on your Page!  You will be surprised.  Others have turned off notifications so your posts don’t appear on their timeline posts.  And besides Facebook is so clever.  Facebook does not post updates to your wall of those you hardly view because their algorithms can work out that you really are not interested!

Now I am not saying go and delete your Pages and Groups because I am not taking that drastic step.  At least not yet!   Pages and Groups are good for those who are really interested.  Awareness is good but don’t get hung up on it.  But social media is stealing your time and you are passively becoming an addict.

It is a fine line between addiction and non addiction

Whether we care to admit or not, there is just that pulling something about Facebook and other social media that keeps us going onto these apps more than a few times a day.  In fact , when you consider it, just 5 years ago, my life was going perfectly great without them.  Why therefore do I need to check Facebook more than three or four times a week?  Anything more than once or twice at a push a day, really is now beginning to compete for my precious time.

Remember the fruit in Eden looked good to eat.  Social media is good, it is clever, it can be positively engaging.  You can reach people whom you may not have been able to.  But when on the train, in restaurants, everyone is having conversations through their phones, it has now a new definition.  Do we need to know what your next door neighbor is up to every week?  I don’t need to feel obliged to say someone looks good when I don’t even like the color of their outfit.

There are sunnier social media climates

Stop now.  Stop now if you are in church service and you need to check your Facebook status.  Or is the first thing you check after service!  Stop now while you are ahead!  The only thing we are to be addicted is Christ.

And if you are looking for a social media that all everyone talks about is Christ, then get on Yookos.  It is a Christian social media site and I believe the only one around at the moment.  At least, you can check your status updates on Christ orientated stuff all the time on Yookos without the guilt that addictions bring!

About The Author

Zoe

Zoe met Eze (Chuck) in the 14th year of what turned out to be an 18 year ‘journey’ with mental illness. They got married less than a year of meeting with Zoe fully knowing Chuck had a diagnosis of mental illness. In the 18th year, Chuck defied the odds of mental illness. A consultant psychiatrist signed him off the mental health system with a bill of NO MENTAL ILLNESS. The consultant was so amazed by Chuck’s astonishing recovery that he even questioned how Chuck was diagnosed with mental illness all those years before, in the first place! Today Chuck is free from medication, its dependency and hospitalizations. Zoe’s award nominated book, DEFYING THE ODDS, chronicles the highs and ‘lows’ of this journey. Zoe, often writing from the standpoint of a caregiver, clearly understands that mental illness does not only affect an individual challenged with the disease, but also families, marriages and society as a whole.

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