Social media for PROGRESS not DURESS.

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Have you for once taken time to think of that one thing that we as individuals can’t just go a day without? Of course, I bet what readily comes to our mind apart from food is our handheld device or better still our phones.

The phone nowadays is that item which if we are without is difficult to imagine how our everyday life will be and that I can say for almost anyone. It contains an incredible amount of information about us, including the social media.

Most of the time an individual spends on their phone is spent on social media, such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat.

Just opening our eyes, instead of looking out at the windows and thanking Mother Nature and the Supreme being for another blessed day we go all in to grab our phones and do what next ?! Yh ! You guessed right !!start looking at likes, posts, comments and views on our different social media platforms where we are supposedly “influencers” Lol ! .

It’s more or less already a habit that’s unconsciously embedded in our lives. It seems normal to us but there’s a lot to really talk about.

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Social media has always been an important part of my life (like every young person’s life). I was of course posting, getting excited about every like and new views in the stories. Everything seemed natural and completely safe but the consequences and impact one can only appreciate in the tail end.

When I was doing my first startup,which was a mini food delivery venture, I wanted to maximize my productivity, and I looked for any way to increase it. The social media really did its bits at making this a possibility. One day, I decided I needed to limit my use of social media. I started noticing that I was addicted to it unconsciously.

At this juncture, I started looking into the impact of social media. Social media, just like cigarettes and alcohol, causes the release of dopamine.

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Any moment of joy like delicious food, communication with loved ones, or a long-awaited vacation is accompanied by a release of this biologically active substance into the blood.

Every like, every new message causes us to release dopamine. We become addicted to it. If there are no likes, no dopamine is produced, and we become indifferent .

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Honestly I didn’t believe it was possible, but then I started paying consistent attention to my state and kind of saw a crystal clear resemblance between social media activity and my mental state.

I tried to limit my use of social media as much as possible. This led to me becoming irritable and nervous. All my symptoms indicated that I was not getting enough dopamine. And then it hit me. Why live my life in such a way that I only get dopamine from my viral life? Why can’t I make my life so that real-life events produce this hormone for me? Where is my productivity? Is this how social media affects our lives??

The consequences of addiction to social networks are depressing; from loss of self-confidence to emotional dependence, and apathy turning into depression.

For the records this tends to happen unconsciously as we do not see the problem and do not even realize that most of the negative consequences come from there, from this digital world addiction.
For some individuals, viewing other people’s lives “under filters” unwittingly raises a lot of rhetorical questions for us like “Why am I not the same as them? Am I something different?”

Expecting social approval, likes to post, and new subscribers, also raises questions: “Is my life so uninteresting? Why doesn’t anyone like me?”
And then what? Of course, depression, apathy, existential crisis.

You can be anything you want on the internet, you can create artificial audience interest in yourself, and you can post and write about things that don’t really exist. People love it…
But this is a key mistake that costs us dearly.

We have to live in the real world. Build your life not to meet expectations or please someone, but simply for yourself. Build your life to be happy.

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In conclusion, we should use social media not as a tool to meet societal expectations, but as a resource for creating our life stories for ourselves and our loved ones.Addiction and constant conformity to societal ideals will do you no good and will only gradually erode your metabolic health.

The telephone and the Internet play a huge role in our lives. Let us use these resources to progress, create something new, and benefit others.

Also, as the Web 3.0 revolution is coming into the picture , it will come do a clean job at completely changing the fabric of the internet and will upend the way we interact, transact and socialize online.

As consumer behaviors inevitably change, so will the need for marketing and advertising strategies that can effectively target anonymous users on the decentralized internet. Things get more interesting from here right ? My thoughts exactly too!

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3 comments
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Great article and we do live in interesting times! I like your message warning of the consequences of social media addiction. We need to spend more time in out "real life" if we find we are online too much. I hope readers take a minute to assess the amount of time they spend in all the various activities they engage in, and make changes if they notice problems.

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Exactly! There needs to be a striking balance .

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