Social Media: Detoxing for Clarity

    Social media is in every aspect of our lives and many of us get our news from there. Let’s be real: it is so much easier to look at a summary post or watch a quick reel or youtube short rather than actually reading a long, boring news article online. It’s more of a convenience rather than intentional. 

    Last semester, I took a class here at TCU with the Honors College called Life Online. In this class, we covered almost every aspect of social media including mental health, scams, data privacy, and algorithms. From there, I became more familiar and aware of the dangers of falsehood that surround us daily. Just as shown in the youtube video titled “Are You Living an Insta Lie? Social Media Vs. Reality,” many of the things we see online are fake. Not just the news but also the lifestyles that people live. In response, this affects us. It affects our mood and the knowledge of what we think is true. Social media platforms such as tiktok, instragam, and facebook all use algorithms that feed off of what we tend to spend more time viewing. In response, our feeds tend to be filled with similar topics and points of view that match our own. In the long run, this creates a mental block of seeing things in only one perspective, and who knows if the information is even true. However, since it sides with our way of thinking, we are more likely to believe it. 

    A lot of times we say that knowledge is power; however, ignorance can be bliss, truly, with respect to social media. As part of our Life Online course, the class committed to a one week social media detox. I took advantage of the opportunity and truly stayed off of all social media including youtube. I found myself so much more aware of reality. I couldn’t see what was going on in people’s lives on social media but rather witnessed their lives in person. I came to realize the social media presents people in ways that are not even close to reality. Since I basically had nothing to do on my phone, I also spent more time getting news by reading and fact checking across multiple websites. I became more alert socially and less tempted by falsehood. This reflection is to say, that although social media can have many positive effects on our lives, it can also have many negatives that we must be aware of when using platforms. If we actually take our eyes off of social media, even for a little bit, we will come to realize the amount of lies we are living in and what reality looks like outside of our phones.