Since I can remember, I’ve probably spent a trillion hours locked in a bathroom compulsively browsing social media, refreshing my Twitter timeline as well as keeping tabs on my various other media platforms.

I’ve used my phone as a crutch for too long. It's gotten to a point that where I resort to my phone whenever there's a social situation I want to avoid.

About a month ago, I challenged myself to give up social media for a week and it stuck. Once a compulsive tweeter, I no longer rely on Twitter to express my feelings and I only log in every so often. Here’s why I think you should give it up too.

Narcissism

Social media has made way for a new breed of narcissists — the type that thrives off of likes and other forms of social acceptance. This new ego turns into a social media personality which, depending on who you are, may or may not resemble who they are in real life. A study done at Western Illinois University measured a link between Facebook activity and narcissism.

The study measured narcissism in two categories: grandiose exhibitionism (GE) and entitlement/exploitativeness (EE). High scorers on GE are those on social media who constantly feel the need to be the center of attention, no matter what. They will even inappropriately self-disclose or say anything for shock value if the focus shifts from them. Those with high EE exhibited “a sense of deserving respect and willingness to manipulate and take advantage of others.”

Those with equally high scores were likely to accept friend requests from strangers and seek social support. In either of these categories, users feel entitled to express their opinions, whether productive or unproductive, right or wrong.

Lurk and Get Ya Feelings Hurt

Off the top of my head, I can count numerous social media narcissists in each category. This phenomenon is becoming a part of the youth’s culture. In a society where we are taught the values of self-esteem, people do whatever it takes to feed their hunger for gratification. This, coupled with the increasing access to mobile technology, has created egotistical monsters. These monsters have a constant hunger for positive feedback; the type of feedback social media consumers receive consistently directly affects self-esteem. Therefore, the positive feedback becomes addicting and the negative feedback can become deadly.

Especially as an African American woman, social media became a danger to my self-esteem. The idealized European standards of beauty that have been conditioned into most of our brains and perpetuated by social media. Even inside the color line, the image of the light skinned woman with a looser curl pattern is idealized. Since social media is available to anyone with internet access, it becomes easier for unsolicited opinions to subconsciously pull on the ego, which made me question my appearance. These unwanted effects made it virtually impossible to idealize myself the way I wanted.

Additionally, my adolescence played another factor in reducing my social media usage. Adolescents typically partake in imaginative audience behavior, which makes them overestimate the extent to which people are watching and evaluating them. This creates a preoccupation with the way people view us.

According to CNN, adolescent victims of cyberbullying are almost twice as likely to attempt suicide as those who have not been victims. Being a part of such an impressionable demographic, I find it vital to monitor my social media usage. Before, I would spend hours on end scrolling through other people’s profiles and yearning for their talents, looks, or stories. The fact that I spent so much time should have a caveat, also. Not only does social media distract us from who we are, but it wastes our time on things that are not tangible. Social media creates the opportunity for us to become anyone we want but leaves the realistic images of ourselves neglected and unwanted.

Antisocial Butterflies: The Death of Conversation

I was even more conflicted, even as a social media savant, whenever I was in a social setting. Like myself, many people use technology as a crutch in social situations.

Social media provides conversation on the user’s own terms. The conversation can be edited and it doesn’t take place in real time so the users have time to think up a response correlating with the image they have idealized for themselves. A room full of people may be completely silent, as a group of antisocial socialites has forgotten what real conversation is.

This society of antisocial socialites has a scary future ahead of it. In the near future, social media may consume its consumers. We use social media to fulfill the basic human need for social interaction, which apparently has faced an adverse effect.

In her TED Talk, Connected, But Alone, Professor Sherry Turkle says that technology attacks us where we are most vulnerable. It is most convenient when we have the feeling that no one is listening to us. So we take to our fabricated world of listeners, creating an illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. This ever-connectedness diminishes our capacity to be alone, so when we are actually alone, it feels as if this solitude is a problem that needs to be fixed. Years from now, we’ll all be lonely cat women who invested too much time in social media.

Unforgettable: Perpetuation of Mistakes and Images

We all know those viral videos and classic memes that seem to never die. They leave lasting impressions on our memories. The same goes for our social media footprints. Just as Daniel will always be remembered for his white Vans, we are remembered for the images we put out on social media.

On many instances, I have seen my peers get in trouble for comments made on social media. Social media serves as a brand, but its constant availability perpetuates these images, making them somewhat permanent. Your employer can see the practical joke you played back in middle school and any other moments where your judgment failed you. Monica Lewinsky attests to this in her TED Talk — being one of the first cases with internet coverage.

Beyond this brand, it also perpetuates mistakes we’ve made and people we should have been over. In most instances, your ex-boyfriend won’t delete his account post-breakup. Even if you unfollow, he may still show up on your timeline. Maybe you’ll be prompted to click on his profile to see what he’s up to and get sucked into a vortex of being bitter instead of better. More often than not, you’ll stumble upon something you wouldn’t want to see and before you know it, you’ve become a lonely old cat lady.

Upon giving up social media, I’ve found it easier to not only accept, but develop and love the reality of my self-image, manage my time better, and find peace and focus. I am no longer overwhelmed by the unsolicited opinions and images that saturate social media. I am content being alone and carefree.

Daja Henry

Writing since December 2016 · 2 stories contributed