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Alternatives to Social Media
Social media has become the main focus of our lives, but there are alternatives to social media. There’s been a trend lately towards putting down devices and having more direct interaction. There’s even a day dedicated to it. March 1st and 2nd is the National Day of Unplugging. This growing event encourages people to take a pledge to turn off their phones and other devices for two days and just do something else. We’ve become so accustomed to communicating with people using social media and texting that we’ve stopped connecting on a real emotional level. We also do less of the things we used to do. We spend time with other people, but often, even when with a group of people, each person is on their phone, either communicating with someone else or posting what we are doing online. If you’ve ever been out to dinner with a bunch of friends and looked around the table as each person texts or posts something, then you know how this can be.
Studies have shown that social media is truly addictive. Some psychologists believe that it’s designed to be addictive and keeps us distracted from accomplishing other goals in life. Because the effects of a social media habit aren’t as glaring as other vices, like drug and alcohol addiction, most of us don’t even realize we’ve become overly consumed with posting and reading posts. With immersive browser apps like WeChat, your entire life can be carried out from inside the application, which makes it easier to organize your life, but even harder to put down your phone or tablet. We are all becoming increasingly aware of the time suck social media creates, but we’re not always sure what we can do about it. We need our phones all the time, don’t we?
So what alternatives are there to social media? If you’re really young, you may not even remember a time when there weren’t social media, but for most of us we do remember what we did before there was a Facebook, Twitter, WeAPP, Snapchat, or Whisper. Some of us went out more, probably watched more TV and played more video games. Some folks probably called people on the phone, got together for lunches or dinners or for sporting events. Others spent more time “visiting” people, just showing up at their house and hanging out or watching a movie. These are all alternatives to being on social media.
An added benefit of not being on social media all the time is that less of our personal information is online. Taking a break from posting means there’s less data to sell and use. Many people stop using social media when they find their name online. It’s not necessary to completely stop using your favorite apps, but you may want to delete information like your name and address. This can be done with the help of an efficient internet removal service. They are experts in how to remove your information from the internet.
