So these past two weeks, we have been discussing the addiction and pitfalls of social media. The biggest issue that was discussed was that Generation Y has become the most addicted to their phones due to the different social media apps that we have. In Jean M. Twenge’s article in the Atlantic she creates a whole new name for our generation just based on our overwhelming use of technology. “The more I talked with young people like Athena, the clearer it became that theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media. I call them iGen. Born between 1995 and 2012, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the internet” (Twenge 2).
Having researched about my generations addiction and seen the issues first hand myself, our class decided we were each going to give up something that we felt we were addicted to for a week and see how much giving up that social media platform or that specific streaming service changed our day to day lives.
I chose to give up Youtube for the week. I have a very busy schedule on weekdays. Each day I have classes, work and club meetings and it doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to do homework so I choose to save most of it for Sundays. The issue is though, because I stack up so many projects and assignments to complete on Sundays I get stressed out and push all the work off by watching hours of Youtube videos. This is very similar to the way Newport explains the need for structure in your day to day life. “When measured empirically, people were happier at work and less happy relaxing than they suspected. And as the EMS studies confirmed, the more such flow experiences that occur in a given week, the higher the subject’s life satisfaction. Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging,” (Newport 84).
Similarly to what is stated above, I feel more productive and ready to problem solve and think about things that need to get done when I have things scheduled throughout the day. It also helps me to stay away from my phone and not think about wasting time on social media, Youtube or Netflix. But would I become more productive on days I didn’t have anything scheduled if I gave it all up?
After trying this for a week, the answer is an unfortunate no.
By giving up Youtube, I was able to stay off and not watch any videos for a week, but instead of becoming more productive and completing more projects and sitting and contemplating more deep work, I just substituted Youtube for another mind numbing activity. This time I went to Buzzfeed and just went down the line and completed their pop culture quizzes.
I gained no extra time and didn’t up my project completion rate at all. But I did start thinking about another aspect in our reading that I didn’t really see relating to our overall topic this week and then it hit me.
In the article “The Web We Have to Save”, a blogger, Hossein Derakhshan thinks the way we use social media to promote ourselves and everything we make is insane. He wished the internet could go back to the days were you could just write and make stuff and just leave it there to be consumed, but instead everyone is more concerned with the most popular and famous people on the internet. So in the end if you want your stuff to be viewed you have to promote it until it becomes the most popular and famous out there.
“In many apps the votes we cast – the likes, the plusses, the stars, the hearts – are actually more related to cute avatars and celebrity status than to the substance of what’s posted. A most brilliant paragraph by some ordinary looking person can be left outside the Stream, while the silly ramblings of a celebrity gain instant Internet presence,” (Derakhshan 8).
I myself am also a culprit of this. When I waste my hours of watching Youtube videos, I’m not watching things that will help me gain knowledge in any way, I’m watching celebrities do stupid stuff. I’m watching entertainment segments on talk shows, or just hours on end of old Saturday Night Live sketches.
So as I sit down this Sunday to write this blog in the late afternoon (after watching endless Youtube videos for a few hours, because my week with out it was up a few days ago). I realized I have gained no time from this experiment but I have gained the knowledge that I don’t need social media, but I want it social media.
I use it everyday as a way to escape. In another article that rebuttals the idea of social media making our generation unhappy, the author shows data that supports the use of social media as a means of escape. “Take a more granular look at the full range of usage, and it looks like the biggest risk of unhappiness is among those poor twelfth graders who don’t use social media at all,”(Samuel).
If you take away the use of social media completely, then we’re left with just the mundane day to day work we have. And after a long day of completing projects, problem solving and running around to two different jobs, 4 clubs and 6 classes, watching a male celebrity put high heels on and make a fool of themselves makes the day melt away just for a few simple seconds.
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