Why You Should At Least Think About Moving On From Social Media
- A Girl In Medicine
- Mar 29, 2021
- 12 min read
Updated: Apr 4, 2021
This blog is going to explore the wacky world of marketing on social media, followed by the many facets of how it could be impacting on your mental health.
Why Social Media Isn't What It Used To Be
The Social Media Experiment
I have not done this before, but lets give this a go,
Picking up my instagram now, before I delete it, I'm going to take a tally of all of the types of posts I see in a typical 5 minute scroll session. The results are as follows:
Friends: posts were genuinely just them having a good time (it was a public holiday the day of this experiment so might be a little higher on average than usual).
Sponsored: were labeled as sponsored and before doing this little tally I genuinely didn't realise how many of these sponsored ads come up in the news feed on an average scroll - I am shocked.
Celeb Advertisements: were insta celebs I follow advertising their products or being paid to advertise for a company
Friends Advertisements: included overt advertisement as well as any tags on their photo that linked to a product (that's still advertisement my friends)
TikTok: those videos that go to fast with people pointing at thin air or doing a dance in active wear and super imposing a thesis on the screen for 0.3 seconds or less
Education: posts by doctors or scientists genuinely educating the public on various topics without selling anything
Affirmations: colourful feel good pump up posts
Memes: surprised there were so few, I swear they are what sucks me into the app in the first place
Try it and see what results you get!
I am pretty shocked at how much advertisement this app really forces upon us these days.
I don't know about you, but I hate ads.
Long gone are the days where I would purposefully tape ads using my VCR while I was recording my favourite episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Which in the 90's. We don't get the less than 60 second stream of entertaining ads like the classics anymore:
"Not happy Jan" "that's 13 30 32" "He bit me into parts, pieces" "And even my legs went that way and my head went that way"
If you're too young to remember these bangers of advertisement, I'm sorry you have grown up in a world where ads are both pervasive and terrible.
Surely I cant be the only person to notice the huge shift in advertisements in the last decade or so. They have becoming inescapable.
No longer can we simply skip past them in magazines and news papers with out so much as glancing at them. We used to struggle to make it to the fridge or the bathroom and back when watching TV and an ad came on during your show. Now you could probably do a lap of your block and return in time. Sometimes I seriously wonder if I've watched more ads than the TV program these days. No wonder so many people prefer streaming online.
Now every screen we view, hold or touch is constantly throwing a barrage of advertisements at us, day in and day out.
I remember getting so angry the day instagram started doing sponsored advertisement in your newsfeed. Why was my favourite app becoming another platform for greed I thought defeatedly.
Ironically before the algorithm was up and running my first advertisements were all for meat and burgers in my local area - great advertisement for a vegetarian hey. Thanks insta. Love your work.
Little did I know that only a few short years after that, the app became less of a way to find connections online - which you might be fooled into thinking is the primary purpose of something called "social media" - would then transform candescently into an online shopping app.
I think the saddest thing about it, is that most people don't even realise that that's what it has become or that they are literally working for advertisement companies without earning a dime for it.
It's become so normalised that we follow people, either our friends or insta celebs and all we do is advertise things to one another. Restaurants, experiences, clothing, technology, makeup, lifestyles.
I admit even getting sucked into it. Giving recommendations on everyday crap that I used and loved. For what reason? I think I thought I was being nice? Because we all know how hard it is to find good useless crap to consume these days right? We need to be constantly reminded online about all the stuff we need to buy.
I tried to stop any kind of recommendations all together, but even just a picture of me studying got 10 instant messages asking "which iPad do you use?" "which app is that?" - and leaving me thinking "I am not a store".
I know there are a lot of genuine hard working small business out there and organisations trying to make the world a better place that are also utilising social media in wonderful ways too. I just don't get fed many of these through the sponsorship or the algorithm anymore.
I miss the days when my inbox was full of genuine conversations and connection and not littered with trash advertisements asking me to be a "BRAND AMBASSADOR"
Terms like "Brand Ambassador" or even "Influencer" are often used in marketing and are synonymous with "gullible fool" and "more money for less work for me".
Not only have they saved on paying someone to actual model, photograph and post about their product, but most of these companies even suck people into buying the thing they're going to advertise. With the illusion its all worthwhile because you'll get your own discount code to give to your followers and you'll get a cut of sales made with that code. Do you know how much more that kind of service is actually worth? Hint: A lot more.
The more followers you get the more companies want you. They start offering you more "free" stuff. Maybe offering you some actual money or expense paid trips or experiences. Seems amazing - living the dream. You must feel SO important. But in reality you are doing ALL of the work for these companies and they are reaping all of the benefit while you are working your but off to keep up with it all. You become obsessed with keeping and gaining more followers, you morph yourself into what you think people will want in order to fulfil this goal. For what?
People are wasting their lives. They're not even becoming real people anymore. They're just one of millions of people caught in the web of social media marketing.
The power of 'word of mouth' is fuelling industries to absorb social media for its own intent. It's slowly turned us all into cogs of the marketing machine. Once you wake up to this, it's hard to see past it.
Social media has changed. Instagram is not the platform I once found daily inspiration and connection on, anymore. It is an online market place that prays on us all.
To quote a Ted Talk that eloquently explains the faults in our online platforms:
"This needs to change. I can't offer a simple recipe, because we need to restructure the whole way our digital technology operates. Everything from the way technology is developed, to the way the incentives, economic and otherwise, are built into the system.
We have to face and try to deal with the lack of transparency created by the proprietary algorithms, the structural challenge of machine learning's opacity, all this indiscriminate data that's being collected about us.
We have a big task in front of us. We have to mobilize our technology, our creativityand yes, our politicsso that we can build artificial intelligencethat supports us in our human goalsbut that is also constrained by our human values.
And I understand this won't be easy.We might not even easily agree on what those terms mean. But if we take seriously how these systems that we depend on for so much operate, I don't see how we can postpone this conversation anymore.
These structures are organizing how we function and they're controlling what we can and we cannot do. And many of these ad-financed platforms, they boast that they're free. In this context, it means that we are the product that's being sold. We need a digital economywhere our data and our attentionis not for sale to the highest-bidding authoritarian or demagogue."
Why Social Media Is Harmful to Mental Health
Likes and Follows, Shares and Saves
I'm almost sure that if you asked children in primary school, they would be able to tell you that likes and follows can have a negative effect on your mental health. It's not a difficult concept to grasp and one that has been hashed out in movies, TV series, the news, the classroom - and yet here we all are gripped by them none the less.
Although I love that instagram removed visible likes here in Australia and thought perhaps that was a step towards fixing so many of the problems this app has created for humanity. Sadly they just altered the iniquitous algorithm around this minor hiccup in the grand design.
Human beings can not be valued in terms of numbers. Not likes on a post. Not subscriptions to a channel. Not numbers on a scale.
Think of the generations who have grown up not knowing there was a life before social media. How their perception of value and worth must have developed is devastating to think about.
My boss at a clinic I used to work at prior to medical school told me that to help get her son off his iPad, she asked him a simple question. "Do you feel better or worse after spending a long time on your iPad?" at first, of course he said "BETTER" because he wanted to play with it. SO his mum gave him the iPad and just asked him to monitor how he felt before and how he felt after over the course of a week and report back what he finds.
This 6 year old boy came to his mum at the end of the week and handed back his iPad. He said he had noticed that it was making him feel sad the more time he spent on it.
He now spends far more time away from screens and is growing up with an awareness that I as an adult didn't even have.
I think a lot of us could live by this little boys example.
Filters
I honestly have started to hate the way my face looks in real life because it can never live up to the filters I use on every app. I tried a detox and to stop using filters which helped a little, but then I just started comparing myself to all the other filtered faces I was presented with everyday and I still felt horrible.
It made my zoom classes last year HELL, I couldn't stop looking at my face and worrying that everybody in the zoom must think I am hideous - very distracting when you're trying to learn online.
Very keen to be getting rid of this and embracing my real self more and taking a hell of a lot less selfies.
Life Through A Screen
I am so guilty of being the first person at a dinner or social event to reach for my phone.
I HATE that. Not only is it extremely rude and offensive to the people you are with, although its become so normalised people don't even tend to second guess it anymore, but it can have long term damaging effects on you.
Reaching for your phone at every opportunity is such a hard habit to break. When you're waiting in a line, when there's a add on TV, when your food arrives at a restaurant, when you've had your fourth phantom vibration in your pocket for the day...
Einstein admits that he would have been unable to become the genius we all know him as now if it weren't for his freedom of thought. In those moments in life where all we can do is think to ourselves, this is when Einstein, and many others, claim to have their moments of brilliance. It is necessary for our brains to have time to collate everything we do during the day and store it in way that make sense and connect it to other information in our brains. Our generation however fills this space for brilliance with mindless scrolling instead.
I believe that moments in life we have the most growth, the most reflection, the most intense moments of creating who we really are and who we are becoming are being swapped out for screen time.
Even if we are watching something educational, inspirational or moving and trying to achieve something important from our screen time, it's still not a substitute for space we need to just think. The only time I have to think these days uninterrupted is in the shower. And that's where I have all of my best idea's. Because its a free space away from being a screen zombie.
I cant wait to delete apps, unsubscribe, switch off and actually live a real-life-life. I honestly have forgotten what that is even like. I'm looking forward to navigating such uncharted waters though.
Missing Important Moments
I watched a great ted talk on social media recently about how a man recently gave up his social media account. I wish I could find it again and link it for you.
He told this story about how he missed a lot of great events with his kids growing up because he was too busy looking at useless crap on his phone.
He reflected on one horrible experience where his kid was in a tournament and made it all the way to the final round. He had been training for a long time for this moment. The man felt his pocket vibrate and without even thinking he reached for his phone. Next minute without even realising what was happening, the crowd was going wild. Screaming and chanting happily. His son had just won his tournament and everybody was celebrating his victory.
But when the man looked up he was meet with the heartbroken eyes of his son staring at him, knowing his dad missed his important moment to read a notification that it was someones birthday on Facebook.
I don't want to live my life like that anymore.
How many time have I gone to a concert and been so obsessed with filming the whole damn thing and all of my favourite songs - only to literally never ever ever rewatch those terrible quality recordings ever again.
How many times have I cut off my partner telling me something because my attention was caught by somebody else messaging me something on my phone.
How many times am I late for work because I spent too long scrolling before getting our of bed, or wake up feeling fucking exhausted because even thought I tried to go to bed early I spent hours mindlessly drooling over irrelevant crap on a screen.
I'm just at a point in my life where its glaringly obvious that these addictions and these apps are holding me back in life, and making me miserable.
I miss real life and real interactions with no screens in sight.
What I'll be doing instead of scrolling from now on with all my free time that I used to fill with scrolling:
Studying
In my undergraduate degree I was top of all my classes, back before social media and smart phone existed. In medical school I am easily the bottom 15% of my cohort and that's probably being generous. I wouldn't be surprised if I am the worst in my cohort with how little I genuinely study. If I honestly spent all the time I wasted on my phone on instagram, studying to become a better doctor, I could have had a shot at a scholarship or dux of my school - but I squandered my time instead.
Reading
I have a book collecting hobbie. Basically I am a free library though, I buy all of these amazing books with the money I barely pull together as a student and then never read them. I lend them to friends which makes me feel good they're not going to waste. But for the longest time I just want to read my books and I choose to read repetitive comments on social media instead - not anymore. I'll be starting the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge, starting with the classic from George Orwell 1984
Writing
I love to write. These blog posts have reminded me of that. I think I will be on the look out for more essay competitions and opportunities to write for the hell of it. Maybe I'll write more blogs. Maybe I won't. We'll see what happens.
Trying New Things
My fiancé is always begging me to go be adventurous in the great big world with him and I always tell him I'm too busy. then I take a look at my screen time and notice almost a day per week is wasted on social media usage. Thats got to end!
Living Actual Life
I'm going to do all the things I say I'm going to do but never do: start getting up early, exercising regularly, getting a skin care routine, learning how to meditate - I know that all sounds super basic but I honestly couldn't juggle incorporating these things into my life because every time I went to start them I would pick up my phone instead and lose my one free hour I had in a flash.
I you have been thinking about kicking the bad habit as well, I really hope you do.
I know the FOMO is scary, but for me the fear of wasting another year of this short time we have on earth glued to adds, turning into a mindless zombie, sacrificing my goals and things that are important to me and instilling this behaviour onto my future kids is what is truely terrifying.
Good luck to you, I hope you can quit social media too
xo
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