{"id":2428,"date":"2019-05-03T08:30:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T08:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/?p=2428"},"modified":"2019-04-30T18:19:58","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T18:19:58","slug":"social-media-shouldnt-control-your-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/03\/social-media-shouldnt-control-your-existence\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media shouldn&#8217;t control your existence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>\u201c<\/strong>You\nwill cherish the joy of reeling in the fish far more than you will cherish the\njoy of knowing its picture was well-liked.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surprise\nis the most prevalent response I receive when I tell people that I don\u2019t use\nsocial media. &nbsp;I don\u2019t oppose social media, deny its significance in\nrespect to the millennial zeitgeist, refute its marketing implications or claim\nthat its existence is wholly negative. During a recent period of re-evaluating\nmy goals and my process for reaching them, I couldn\u2019t help but question social\nmedia\u2019s presence in my process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Time\nis our most valuable resource. A day\u2019s architecture is built to support the\nhours and minutes it will take to see endeavors (homework, fitness, meditation,\ndaily minutiae, etc.) through. Despite being fully aware that the clock is\nindifferently ticking, all too often I have found myself swiping up and down\nand through social media feeds. Five minutes here and 10 minutes there seems\nacceptable when comparing those few minutes to the 18 hours that one is awake.\nDeciding it was high time to reassess my time, I added up all the minutes that\nI spent mindlessly scrolling through my phone, and then compared that to the\ntime I spent awake. For example, if I spend five minutes on social media, twice\nan hour (probably low-balling here), and I am awake for 18 hours, I spend three\nhours of my day with my nose pressed to a cold, glass screen. But why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Snippets\nof inspirational videos and miraculous human feats motivate you to act. Joe\nRogan expounding on laziness. Tiger Woods in the green jacket. Oprah and\nMarilyn Monroe quotes. Examples abound. These posts are meant to enrich your\nlife, but they become a detriment when they are used as the main source of your\nmotivation. It is impossible to use alchemy techniques to transform the words\nof others into your fuel. The wellspring of your creative individuality flows within\nand is refined by your fellow man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;The revealing and\/or futile humor of memes has\nthe ability to pull you from fatigue, self-analyzation and even stress by way\nof comic relief. One flick of the thumb later, the relief is gone. The next few\nminutes are spent trying to re-capture it, and by the time you put your phone\ndown, it\u2019s forgotten all together. What doesn\u2019t disappear is the relief\nprovided by human connection. The least profound forms of human interaction are\nfar more vital to our well-being than the trivial pings of satisfaction that we\nreceive from social media. Things like learning something about someone who\ngrew up 5,000 miles away from you, locking eyes over a cup of coffee, receiving\nencouragement from peers, sharing a laugh and even a good debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Life\nis a constant stream of ups and downs. Some days, you kill it. Others, you\nchoke. The days that you kill it, you want to share it. Of course there\u2019s nothing\nwrong with wanting others to know of your triumphs, but the desire to receive\napproval via social media (in the form of likes) creates an anxiety that\novershadows the joy you experienced in that moment. The days you choke are\nspent comparing your down day to the online lives of people who seem to be\nkilling it all the time, but these people aren\u2019t killing it any more than you\nare. They have days that don\u2019t go their way. Same as you. Same as me. Sometimes\nthat is forgotten. The world we live in has us hardwired to strive for an\nenhanced experience, so comparing ourselves with the colorful and evocative\nposts we encounter on a daily basis is inevitable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Upon\nrealizing these things, I decided it was time to give the accounts a break. To\nsolidify my commitment, I deactivated all of my accounts. Here is what has\ntranspired in the process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Obviously,\nI spend less time looking at my phone. This allows me more time to look around\nand notice things that I had failed to notice before. It is amazing how many\nmore people you interact with when your nose isn\u2019t glued to the glass. My daily\nwork output is far more prolific without the escape that social media offered\nme. My homework is seldom procrastinated, which leaves more time for me to do\nthe things that I enjoy. Workouts are more efficient and more common. (Fun\nfact: social media possesses the uncanny ability to turn a 45-minute workout\ninto a 90-minute affair.) Since I spend less time reading other people\u2019s\ncaptions and epithets, I spend more time turning paperback pages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most\nimportantly, I have taken myself out of a futile, online game that carries no\nclout in the real world. This relief of pressure has been well-worth the cost\nof deactivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Employers\ndon\u2019t care how many likes you received on your St. Patrick\u2019s Day picture.\nPotential suitors aren\u2019t concerned with the lighting in your recent post. The\npeople that love you and cherish your existence don\u2019t care how many followers\nyou acquire, or how many likes you accrue. Neither should you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cYou will cherish the joy of reeling in the fish far more than you will cherish the joy of knowing its picture was well-liked.\u201d Surprise&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[103],"ppma_author":[182],"class_list":["post-2428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-social-media-control"],"aioseo_notices":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"authors":[{"term_id":182,"user_id":31,"is_guest":0,"slug":"dylan-dozier","display_name":"Dylan Dozier","avatar_url":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/wp-content\/litespeed\/avatar\/fea1cc1fe742527221bdb9ee0ed32d0d.jpg?ver=1776215706","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2430,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions\/2430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2428"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}