BY HANNAH ALEXIS
VN STAFF WRITER
As young people living in America, our daily lives include social media.
We use it for entertainment, for the news and to see what other people are up to.
Yet, if someone were to tell you to delete all of your accounts, would you be able to?
Picture yourself arriving to class early.
Your teacher isn’t there yet so you pull out your phone and try to figure out what to do to kill time.
You could try to watch a few minutes of “Scandal” on Netflix, but you would rather watch the episode as a whole than a few snippets here and there throughout the day.
In the end, you settle on scrolling through Instagram while waiting for your teacher to start class.
Eventually, you get into the bad habit of logging into your social media whenever you’re bored, whether you’re in the bathroom, taking the bus, talking to friends or eating at the dinner table.
Things quickly get out of hand.
Now you’re crossing busy intersections without bothering to be aware of your surroundings because you don’t want to take your eyes off an Instagram Live video.
It isn’t until you almost get hit by a car that you realize, I could have died.
Having a social media account isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
However, when you start trading your physical life for what’s online, it becomes a problem.
We see parents on their phone, not paying the slightest attention to their children playing at the park.
At what point did our phones become more important than our kids?
How will children feel, knowing their parents care more about their phones than watching them have fun?
Whatever’s online will always be there for us to go back to.
Unfortunately, the same thing can’t be said about the people we love.
If you haven’t already, try to get off of social media for a week, or even a month.
Maybe you’ll start to see changes in your daily life.
When you’re in class and you’re bored, try doodling or daydreaming for a change.
It will help boost your creativity.
When you’re eating dinner with your parents, ask them about anything that comes to mind: their childhoods, their fears, their goals.
They won’t always be there to answer your questions.
One day, you will be able to completely delete all of your social media accounts.
You will learn who your real friends are.
By focusing on you own life rather than on the lives of others, you will learn more about yourself, too.
Don’t let social media take over your life.
You’re more than the “you” online.
So act like it.
