Having an account on social networks has recently become not so much fashionable and prestigious, but not having one is strange and suspicious. You are not on VKontakte - a freak. If you are not looking for friends on Facebook, you are not trending. If you don’t administer your group on LinkedIn, it’s bad manners. I didn’t read what Medvedev told the world on Twitter this morning - he’s an eccentric. Alas, finding living people who now have neither a cozy blog on LiveJournal, nor a VKontakte page, nor a wall on Facebook is as difficult as finding an astronaut in one’s own environment.
The columnist conducted a survey among ardent opponents of well-known online services and found out why some people, despite the general virtual insanity, are not on social networks at all.
I don't need other people's friends
Friends, boyfriends, followers and simply “leftist” people can flood even the most “fresh” account in just a few days. You just need to inform any real friend about your online registration.
Within a matter of hours after the offer to become virtual friends with classmate Tanya, an unexpected invitation will come from fellow student Katya, who will immediately introduce you to her sister Marina, followed by a wink at you from a completely unknown middle-aged man named Vartan. A few more moments - and you have already acquired a phenomenal number of followers, of which only one third is vaguely familiar to you.
And it’s good if new acquaintances do not bother you with their presence, but are only peacefully included in the ranks of your friends. It’s much worse when communication with them becomes intrusive and unwanted.
Rate my photo, give me a like, repost my link, join a group of cat lovers with black ears and white tails - these are just some of the suggestions that happy owners of social network accounts regularly receive from their old and new acquaintances.
“Twitters” deserve special surprise, whose desire to be read by various bots and commercial organizations is comparable only to the dream of a clumsy ballerina to dance at the Bolshoi Theater. As strange as it may sound, people subscribe to reading other people's accounts in anticipation of response, thereby stimulating an increase in the number of their subscribers. And some citizens even offer to help each other in “following”, considering it their duty to inform the world that the account of a certain Vasya is especially valuable and definitely needs to be followed.
And some social services, having completely covered the user with networks of connections, have recently come up with the idea of charging money to make his [that is, the user’s] account inaccessible to all other users of the network. Of course, except for friends. This is where the real arrogance lies.
I do not want my personal data to be sold
Name, gender, height, weight, marital status, sexual orientation, hobbies, place of residence, phone number, e-mail, Skype, ICQ, photographs, finally... who needs so many of them? Durov? Zuckerberg? MOSSAD? Or maybe an alien intelligence?
Social networks beg, and people mindlessly say whatever they want about themselves. True, especially “sophisticated” citizens, sensing a catch, try to protect personal information and cunningly leave incomplete data on various accounts: somewhere a first name, somewhere a surname, and somewhere a photograph. At the same time, users naively believe that such a protective technique will be effective if someone wants to find out anything about them from social services on the Internet.
Do you love geolocation services and enjoy telling your friends and the world where you are at the moment? Become a godsend for criminals, scammers, kidnappers and other antisocial elements who, if necessary, are ready to gain profit by studying your habits and monitoring your regular routes and favorite meeting places. Do you need this?
Alas, the abundance of scammers on the Internet does not at all frighten our citizens, who are ready to gladly share their most intimate information with the whole world - personal information. What’s strange is that the indexing of registered accounts on social networks by search engines leads to a terrible delight... So, according to users, they are easier to find on the Internet.
I don't need useless communication
To maintain constant interest in your own person on social services, you need to inform your friends and acquaintances about your existence with enviable frequency. It is advisable to do this through witty statements that can be heard on a trolleybus, or pictures that can be found on the Internet.
Uselessly browsing through all posts and reading unimportant thoughts and phrases often takes up a lot of the user’s time. If time allows, then, in addition to posting on your own and other people’s walls, you can comment on friends’ statuses, discuss the latest news, rate photos, and also give “likes”.
As a rule, conversations on social networks are fleeting and inconclusive. Discussion of momentary statuses most often comes down to banal mutual praise, and discussions on sensitive topics end on the tenth message, as interest in them on the part of users quickly fades away, and attention switches to new uselessness.
Twitter, apparently created by speech therapists for dyslexics, does not at all imply unnecessary tension in the brain. Limiting message length to 140 characters is not very conducive to developing conversations. For those who try to keep abreast of all the news on the planet, all that remains is to have time to read everything that falls into the feed from other people’s accounts.
I don't have time for this
Money, connections, dreams can be earned, restored, reinvented. Time, as we know, cannot be returned. However, people manage to thoughtlessly waste this exhaustible resource on rating photos, changing their own statuses and creating duplicate (!) accounts of their own profiles on social networks.
Being present on social services takes a lot of time. It is a fact. And if some people are ready to shape their image on networks while sitting at their computers at work, then individual citizens can hang out on Twitter or Facebook at any time of the day or night. Sometimes it seems that before the advent of social networks, people, lying on the couch at home, just silently stared at the ceiling. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the manic interest in viewing and discussing all sorts of useless things on the Internet.
Exciting games of being a cheerful farmer, watching all the episodes of "Interns", looking at stupid pictures with kittens, searching for virtual interest groups, retweeting exclusive thoughts and witty jokes, and much, much more - all this eats up the lion's share of many people's lives. Mostly young people. Unfortunately, there are few lonely old people on social networks.
I still need a decent job
Users of all social resources, of course, suspect that their online activities are available not only to their friends, but for some reason they strongly do not want to believe the idea that their photos from a drunken party or, worse, an obscene squabble about the status of their account, can be read by third parties. Especially employers, especially those offering work in a reputable organization.
HR managers have long adopted the Internet as the main resource for searching for a detailed profile on an applicant. And the first aid in this matter, of course, is an endless array of information on social networks. Whether it's worth posting publicly everything you can say to your best friend on the phone is up to you.
There is an interesting bug in human nature: people want to think less and simplify the existing model of the world around them. We like to live and not know reality, to eat bad food without understanding the diversity of world cuisine.
Some find it convenient to exist in a world where there is one enemy, while others find it difficult to think about the infinity of the Universe. But all these patterns of following the path of least resistance are nothing compared to what happens to us with constant use of social networks.
1. We stopped understanding what was happening
Remember how you reacted to a new law that you didn’t like. It was an emotional outburst that you were sure to share on social networks. Have you thought about the reasons for this behavior?
Someone wrote an angry “how long” on Twitter, someone shared a link to the news and commented indignantly on it. It’s just that no comprehension occurs. Instead, you wait for likes and comments. The more there are, the more you believe that you are right.
You rely not on logic and your own experience, but on the opinions and reactions of strangers. Then, having caught an emotional wave, you will produce negativity again and again, receiving a flurry of approval from your “friends”. But you will never comprehend what is happening, but will only waste precious time reflecting on insignificant events.
Your whole life could go like this.
It seems to you that you are in the thick of things, but you are not. You are in the midst of gadgets. You are simply reacting to a match, concert or rally that took place without you. You are where you were yesterday. Nothing depends on you, no matter what you think about it.
2. Our picture of the world is distorted
Constantly being in virtual contact with different people, you stop perceiving reality. A distorted picture of the world and the people inhabiting it is built in your head.
Have you ever seen someone write that they cheated on their wife or watched a great porn movie? Have you read that a guy doesn’t have enough money to survive until the end of the month? No. On social networks, you will only see succulent dinners at a restaurant, photos from vacation with blue skies and palm trees, and pictures of newly purchased gadgets.
No one will show cockroaches in the kitchen, no one will talk about back and neck pain, no one will share that he picks up prostitutes every Friday.
Reality is not for you. For you - glossy images with perfect views of the sea, a friend in a photogenic pose, lunch with Instagram filters and children who never cry, never poop, but only smile, wear the most beautiful clothes in the world and play with LEGOs.
The same goes for . I read dozens of indignant comments that all trash cans have been removed in Kyiv. I thought I would return to a city littered with garbage. But it turned out that the ugly ones were replaced by cute plastic trash cans, familiar from Europe and Asia. Nobody wrote about new trash cans, only about destroying old ones.
3. We see the worst of all possible worlds.
We do not live in the best place, like any person inhabiting the Earth. There is no ideal world. Spending time on social networks every day, we are convinced of this by receiving the most depressing information.
No one is sharing the news about the launch of 100 new buses. But everyone will be discussing the $10 million stolen during their acquisition.
Journalists choose terrible news stories, and we share the worst of them.
The result is such a picture of the world that you want to hang yourself. So the world you didn't choose seems the most disgusting.
4. We don't know who our real friends are.
You will not be able to say for sure who is your real friend, who is your comrade, and who is just an acquaintance. You will mix everything into one pile.
5. We forgot about the real world in pursuit of likes
You will see a stunning sunset and, of course, you will want it. But you judge its beauty by the number of likes it collects on Instagram or Facebook. Collected 100 likes - awesome sunset! No likes is not a good sunset.
I photographed this sunset while jogging and immediately processed it, significantly worsening my performance. For what?
You see a fragment of a grandiose event that lasts a matter of minutes, but your eyes are in . You are busy processing the photo and publishing it. The sunset is already over, and you missed everything.
I didn't see the sun cross the horizon. I was busy posting photos Now it's time to eat. You order spaghetti, but you start by taking pictures of it. Only now you will be eating a cold dish - processing and publishing the photo takes a lot of time. But no one will know about this, because you won’t write about it.
100 likes mean that the restaurant and the dish are excellent, but what you think is secondary. Eat your cold spaghetti, the taste of which you will not remember because you will be busy studying your news feed.
Yes, this soup got cold while I was photographing it. You also communicate with brands on social networks. Maybe try talking to a bottle of beer in a store and listen to a fresh joke? Maybe the satellite dish will amuse you with a demotivational lesson about cable television? Maybe the showroom car will show you the latest TopGear in real life? Hardly. It's time to think about the absurdity of the current state of affairs.
I'm a computer scientist and millennial who also writes books and blogs. Due to these demographics, I should have become an active social media user, but that is not the case. I've never had a social media account.
Now I am rather an exception, but I believe that many people should follow my example. Social networks create many problems - they corrode civic life, create cultural limitations, etc.; but my main argument is more pragmatic: you should quit social media because it can harm your career.
This statement, of course, contradicts our current understanding of the role of social networks in the professional sphere. We've been told that we need to develop our brand on social media because it opens us up to opportunities we might otherwise miss and maintains the connections we need to move forward. Many people of my generation fear that without social media they will become invisible in the job market.
In a recent article for New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan recalled the first time he felt the need to update his blog every half hour or so. It seems like everyone with a Facebook page and a smartphone these days feels the need to engage in emotionally intense and personal activities on social media. He writes: “This was once an unthinkable step even for a professional blogger, but now it is a common standard for everyone.”
I think this behavior is wrong. In a capitalist economy, the market rewards rare and valuable things. Social media is undeniably not like that. Any sixteen-year-old with a smartphone can come up with a hashtag or repost a popular article. Thinking that doing low-value activities will help you advance in your career is pretty stupid.
Achieving professional success is difficult, but it's not that complicated. Almost always, to achieve real achievement and fulfillment, you need to hone your craft and apply it to the things that people care about. This philosophy is perhaps best exemplified by Steve Martin's advice to artists: "Be so good that they can't help but notice you." If you do this, everything else will work itself out, no matter how many Instagram followers you have.
In response to my skepticism about social networks, they often say that after all, there is “no harm” from these services. Okay, you're honing your skills, you're doing something valuable, my critics say, but why not use social media for opportunities and connections with other people? I have two arguments against this position.
First, the number of interesting opportunities and useful connections in the real world is not as scarce as advocates of social networks claim. Throughout my professional life, for example, as I became a scientist and writer, I found more interesting opportunities than I could handle. I have special filters on my website that even help reduce the number of offers I receive.
My research on successful business professionals reinforces this point: As you become more successful, good things will find you. No, I'm not trying to prove that opportunities and connections are not important at all. But I'm saying you don't need social media for this.
My second objection concerns the idea that social media is harmless. In fact, the ability to focus on complex tasks becomes increasingly valuable in a complex economy. But social media weakens this skill because it is designed to be addictive. The more you use social media the way it was designed to be used, which is constantly and throughout your waking hours, the more your brain learns to signal you at the slightest hint of boredom.
Once this connection in the brain is established, it becomes difficult to solve complex problems with the full concentration that they require, because your brain simply will not tolerate such a long time without a new dose. And that's partly why I give up social media—out of fear that it will impair my ability to concentrate, which is the skill I use for a living.
The thought of deliberately introducing a service into my life that will destroy my attention is as scary to me as the thought of smoking is to many athletes. If you are serious about creating something important, then it should be just as scary for you.
And the most important thing, probably, is the way of thinking that arises among users of social networks. Focusing on developing your brand on a social network is a completely passive approach to professional growth. You are wasting your time and attention: instead of creating something important, you are trying to convince the world that you yourself matter. This last idea is tempting, especially for members of my generation who were raised with similar attitudes, but it can be extremely counterproductive.
Most social networks can be described as a collection of several trivial entertainment services that are now in high demand. They're fun to use, but you're kidding yourself if you think tweeting, posting, and liking are a good use of your time.
If you're serious about making an impact on the world, then turn off your phone, close your browser tabs, roll up your sleeves, and get back to your work.
02/16/2018 at 21:18, views: 10185Facebook will be closed. Instagram will be blocked. VKontakte is being completely liquidated as a network. Not a day goes by without the Russians being frightened by rolling blackouts—no, not electricity, but energy of a completely different kind. Energy of communication via the Internet. Blocking social networks is almost as terrible a punishment for adults as a week without cartoons for children. Moreover, threats come both from outside in the form of sanctions from unfriendly powers, and from internal censors - representatives of security forces. Plus periodic malfunctions. All this sows such panic among users, as if these were not ordinary technical problems, but the beginning of a global flood.
However, there are characters to whom all these anxieties are unfamiliar. MK found people who had never used social networks in their lives. This is a young engineer, a pensioner from Moscow, and a law enforcement officer. They told us why this happened and what they imagine social networks to be like. And the psychologist explained how to rid the world of network addiction altogether.
Konstantin Lelkov, 26 years old, robotics engineer
I am very well versed in computers and technology in general, but I don’t register on social networks as a matter of principle. I have neither the need nor the desire.
I'm not a very social person, so I hang out with people I know personally. I don't need social media for this. But I know that all my friends have their own pages.
When I was studying at the institute, we periodically had situations when it was necessary to organize people, and the people suddenly realized that I was nowhere to be found. Every time I heard something like “Damn, you’re not there!..”.
But then we all moved to dropbox - this is a cloud drive where you can dump information: texts, photos, videos, everything you need for the group. If they needed to cooperate, they just called me.
At the same time, my classmates had a common VKontakte group, where discussions about their studies were held. I never wanted to join there. Judging by the reviews, some kind of heresy was going on there all the time. I didn’t see it myself, but I heard it being discussed. Someone was constantly clogging up the airwaves with unnecessary messages and stupid pictures, and this caused a stir. Why do I need it?
My friends don’t particularly express their attitude towards my decision, no one considers me to be somehow flawed. True, from time to time someone sighs that they need to make an additional call to someone who has not read important information in some group. But in general, I’m always available via Skype and by phone, that’s not a problem.
By the way, my mother, who will turn 59 this year, is registered on both Odnoklassniki and Facebook. I didn’t help her with this - she asked someone else. She spends quite a lot of time there, looking at the pages of handicraft stores, where they often post coupons for discounts and some ideas for creativity.
In fact, once I tried to register on VKontakte. I was writing a thesis and I needed information from our group. And for some reason it turned out to be so difficult! I even completed the first stage, but almost immediately I received a message that the page was blocked due to suspicious activity. They asked me to confirm my identity and send a bunch of documents. And I just scored.
I can roughly imagine what a social network looks like. I think it's like a forum with a GUI. Section with photos, videos, messages. You know, before social networks there were forums? People talked there, I also sat with them for a bit. Basically, these were thematic forums dedicated to things that I was interested in at the time: computer games, robotics...
News doesn't interest me at all. But I still tend to be aware of what's going on in the world. And social networks have nothing to do with it. I have a guy at work who keeps track of the news all day long and tells everyone in his office what he read. Own information bureau.
Lyudmila Anatolyevna, 69 years old, pensioner
I have never been registered on any social network. I know that this is very popular among young people, and I think that if I continued to work, maybe I would be able to master some such site. Just to be on trend.
But now it’s already difficult for me, I can’t figure it out. The brains are no longer the same. There are still so many scammers now, I constantly hear about people having their money stolen from their accounts, writing a message on behalf of a relative, and so on.
There is another important point: I would not want any person who once knew me to be able to find me so easily. People are different, I don’t want some of my old acquaintances to easily find out how I live now, what I do, or try to contact me. Young people probably take it easier on this.
I can’t say that there is no Internet in my life at all. For example, I pay bills online via phone. My friends told me that it was very simple, so one day I came to the bank, gave them my phone and asked them to set everything up for me. I mastered it quite easily.
As for news, I definitely don’t need the Internet for this. In the kitchen I always have the radio on, and the TV is often on. I also subscribe to newspapers. If something really important happens, I can open the Internet, news is always downloaded there automatically. But I rarely do this.
I distribute a catalog of cosmetics and I know that they also have a website that looks exactly like the catalog. I think the social network is about the same. I heard that you can upload different files there and write messages.
I don’t need this, because I communicate with my friends on a landline phone. Even from another city. For example, I have friends from Voronezh, we are very close. I just pick up the landline and call them. Sometimes we chat for a long time. Yes, it’s paid - so what, the amounts are not exorbitant. It seems they charge 1 ruble 60 kopecks per minute. I can afford such expenses.
True, my grandson recently set up Skype for me on my computer, but I hardly use it. Occasionally they call me or my husband on it, but everything is somehow complicated.
Recently it was my husband’s birthday, an old friend from Georgia called him on Skype, we were chatting, and he suddenly said: “I can’t hear you!” But I can’t do anything, I don’t understand how. A landline phone would be better.
I can't look at people who constantly sit with their eyes on their phones. This is terrible, really, really bad. A person destroys his psyche, this interferes with normal human communication. Sometimes I can’t even restrain myself and can quietly curse in my heart. For example, on the subway: everyone sits stupidly in these gadgets, doesn’t see anyone around, and walks ahead. Sometimes I even burst out loud: “Lord, why are you walking without looking!”
But personally, I’m unlikely to dare to make a remark to a person. What's the point? It is unlikely that they will think about their lifestyle; at best, I will hear in response something like “Fuck you, grandma!”
Vyacheslav Romanovich Rasner, 67 years old, tour guide, famous thanks to the Internet, former homeless
From 2010 to 2017, I lived on the street and dreamed of leading tours around my beloved city of St. Petersburg. Two years ago, the girl Sveta helped me make this dream come true. She did something on the Internet, I think she opened a group where she told my story.
People actually began to come to me, I told them - and am still telling them - the stories of the houses on Nevsky Prospect. And this is amazing. There are countless homeless people in the city. But for some reason everyone comes to me. I ask everyone: “Why did you come to the homeless man on an excursion?” They answer: “There are good reviews about you on the Internet.”
They say there is a group with 14,000 people. I have no idea what this means. I just really hope they don't all come to my excursion at the same time. Because one day 28 people came at once, they came from Yaroslavl, it was a lot for me. Usually they come in twos or threes, that’s enough.
There is an Internet cafe opposite the metro station where I always stand. I just can’t muster up the courage to go there and have them show me my group.
I know that a computer has a screen and buttons. But I don’t understand which ones I need to click to see reviews about my loved one.
Natalia, 35 years old, law enforcement officer
— Probably, my case is not entirely ordinary - I still use social networks, but only for work. The fact is that intelligence officers are not recommended to lead an active Internet life. That's why I have a page with a fictitious name and a photo of a pretty stranger from a photo bank. I can’t reveal all the secrets, I’ll just say that from this page I study the lives of citizens who find themselves involved in various bad stories. Some are so frank on the Internet that their inner world is revealed in full view. This is very useful for us. I restore the smallest details of a person’s biography, find his relatives and closest friends. Take for example the recent case of a student who killed and raped the girl he was in love with.
unrequitedly in love. He described everything in detail right on his page. This makes our work much easier.
Sometimes I enter into correspondence if some details need to be restored. You have no idea how much people believe what you write to them. If I have children, I will definitely talk through these moments with them. So that they communicate online only with those they know personally. So that they understand that behind an avatar with a pretty face there may be an elderly pedophile hiding. It is clear that this is one of the worst scenarios, but this really happens. In my practice, people often begin to open up without even really finding out who is writing to them. Moreover, they leak such intimate things about their friends that if I were the latter, I would wonder whether it’s worth hanging out with such people - after all, they tell all the ins and outs to the first person they meet. If we are talking about teenagers, then they themselves are ready to pour out their souls to an anonymous person. Let me give you an example: some time ago, an elderly man, previously convicted, was detained for having regular sexual relations with a 14-year-old schoolgirl. I entered into a correspondence with the girl, and she revealed her innermost secret to me. It turns out that she was madly in love with her seducer, she believed that they were having an affair and that he would marry her when she grew up. His arrest plunged her into deep depression. She naturally did not want to live without him, abandoned her studies, and suffered terribly. And she couldn’t reveal her secret to anyone from her real environment: her friends wouldn’t understand her, her mother would simply kill her for doing this. With each message it became obvious: she entered into a relationship with an adult man voluntarily. Another thing is that his actions were still illegal and his motives were not at all what the girl thought. After talking with me, she felt at least a little bit better. But, on the other hand, imagine that on the other side it would not be me, but a friend of the seducer, who would thus try to “comfort” the girl and persuade her to have sex.
Why don't I register under my name? I think the main reason is that I don't like to show off my life. I once had a bad experience. A long time ago I registered on Odnoklassniki and found my first love there. In the late 90s, we studied at the same university, dated for a year and a half, it seemed to me that everything was fine with us. But he suddenly broke off communication with me without explanation. For a long time I was at a loss as to what happened. Then she regained her peace of mind and met her future husband. And then ten years later I found my ex-boyfriend on social networks. I couldn’t resist and wrote him a neutral message, like “how many years, how many winters.” And he responded by asking for forgiveness for his sudden disappearance. It was so sincere! Then I invited him to meet. Just as friends: I was wondering how his life turned out, whether he got married, whether he had children. Well, I won’t hide it, I wanted to know why he behaved so ugly then. And what do you think? After that he disappeared again. He didn’t answer me anything, deleted the page, and that’s it. So social media is evil.
OPINION OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
What should adults do first if a teenage child spends all his free time staring at his phone? We asked family psychologist Natalya PANFILOVA to answer this question:
1. Look from the outside at yourself and other adult household members - are there anyone among you who spends their time in exactly the same way?
It has long been a known fact that children often copy the habits of their parents and adopt rituals accepted in the home circle. It is unrealistic to demand that a child put down the phone when during dinner all the adults themselves are constantly distracted by the Internet.
“Parents who spend a lot of time on gadgets will have to take care of themselves,” says family psychologist Natalya Panfilova. - Make it a rule - while at home, spend time with each other. Moreover, this rule applies not only to the apartment, but to any pastime when the child is with you. You should be with him, talk, be interested in how he feels at the moment.
2. Organize your child’s leisure time in such a way that he receives lively emotions.
Experts say that gadgets are substitutes for communication. Interest in them arises against the background of the fact that the teenager experiences difficulties with communication.
- Engage in your child’s leisure time, organize it so that he gets vivid impressions of what is happening. At the same time, take into account his interests. If you brought him to the beach, then keep in mind that he will be bored just sunbathing by the water. And if you alternate swimming with hiking in the mountains or river rafting, it will work.
The same goes for everyday activities. Sports and music sections, hobby groups, joint activities with friends - all this will switch a teenager from the virtual world to the real one.
3. Buy him a smartphone.
Yes, yes, there is nothing wrong with a child having his own gadget. Especially when all friends and classmates have it. The worst thing that can be done out of a desire to protect the younger generation from addiction is to deprive them of the very opportunity to use the Internet.
- This is a cruel test for a child. Firstly, it will put him in a negative light among his peers. Secondly, the child will still look for a way out of the situation. This is a long-known practice; at all times, children were forbidden to watch TV and talk on the phone. What did we get as a result? That all the powerful energy of a teenager is spent on how to get around the ban. Children are very creative; depriving them of a gadget will not solve the problem of addiction.
4. Agree on a measured time of “communication” with the gadget.
It’s better to start not directly with a restriction from the series “from today no more than an hour a day,” but with an attempt to come to an agreement.
“For example, you can offer your child to pay for courses or entertainment that interests him, and in return, agree on the maximum allowable time that he will spend communicating on the Internet or playing games. The main thing is dialogue, not orders. It works. And you shouldn’t speculate on your studies.
In order to assess the uselessness of dictatorial prohibitions, experts suggest trying this situation on yourself. If a husband allows his wife to meet with a friend for 1.5 hours, and the rest of the time he demands that she cook borscht, this is unlikely to cause a positive reaction.
Experts are unanimous: Internet addiction develops in children much faster than in their parents. Adults are forced to constantly switch: they need to earn money, do repairs, fix the car - willy-nilly they have to put down the phone. For a teenager, everything is different: his nervous system is open to new information, he dives into it and hangs for a long time. And this cannot be ignored. It is advisable to teach the younger generation from childhood to be interested in various subjects outside the home. Swimming in the summer, ice skating in the winter, forming taste preferences and preferences so that the child knows that the world is fraught with many amazing things that are available off the Internet.
I feel unhappy after visiting the pages of smiling friends at various parties, viewing photos of numerous travels, buying apartments, cars...
And yes, I am terribly jealous of the missed opportunities that someone picked up and carried into a bright and airy future. Social media brings out a lot of negativity in me and I'm afraid of going to the dark side. And I’m also completely incapable of bragging and flaunting myself. This is just very, very difficult for me. I don't know how to be a star, and my posts often end up unliked and never reach the top views on Facebook. I'm not popular..."
These experiences were shared by my client, a young woman who came to see her because of acute self-doubt. Pleasant, interesting, intelligent, dressed with taste. It is difficult, looking at her, to suspect that same notorious uncertainty and such deep feelings about such a seemingly unworthy fact as unpopularity on social networks.
Much has been written about the downside of social networks and there are a number of rather interesting studies on the topic of their negative impact on the people’s psyche. I will just touch on some key facts that, in my opinion, deserve the most attention.
Negative Impact of Social Media
1. Stealing time
Light surfing of 15 minutes often turns into hours of aimless sitting, looking at other people’s profiles, photos and reading superficial life hacks.2. Cultivating feelings of insecurity
Everyone goes on vacation to the islands, buys apartments, cars, changes prestigious jobs, looks great, and I’m Cinderella.3. Disappointment in your life
Against the backdrop of all these successful and beautiful people, you realize that your life is passing by.Superficial thinking - pictures with quotes, short posts, but in what quantities. The brain is overloaded with information, perception becomes very selective, fatigue accumulates, which affects the quality of assimilation and the amount of information that can be processed.
4. Addiction
A stable and constant craving for being on social networks is formed.A simple cure, or why they do it
And now about personal experiences of failure and a simple medicine that will help you cope with it. Networks are emotional; this is their main channel of influence. So ladies and gentlemen, let's use some logic! - Who, being in their right mind and sober memory, would post a crooked and oblique photograph of themselves, taken from a bad angle and in a boring environment?
- Who will share the grief and sadness that he has been pouring a sea of tears into his pillows for a long time about loneliness and has despaired of finding his other half?
- Who will tell stories about failures at work or that work is in the liver with all dear colleagues and no less beloved bosses?
- Who will talk about depression, loss of meaning in life, or a difficult period with fears, worries, and ups and downs?
- Who will share their thoughts about divorce, about how a child is swinging on a chandelier for two years and how from time to time you want to go out the window and these thoughts no longer cause fear and reproach?
At the cost of enormous efforts, people maintain the brand of success, happiness, and harmony. This is the key to popularity, likes, the envy of others, ratings - all the attributes that confirm that you belong to the pack and play by its rules.
I have not met any desperate daredevils who would engage in a spiritual striptease on the topic of how hard it is to live, how lousy the soul can be and what fears overcome them before going to bed. This is not accepted, it is difficult to get many likes for this, and, moreover, such frankness can seriously undermine the successful personal brand built through titanic efforts.
5 more reasons for perfect social media profiles
1. With the help of a profile, many people try to please the employer.
2. The profile is often used to develop a business and sell your goods and services.
3. There is quite a lot of competent information on how to more successfully promote yourself on social networks and at least many of my friends use it.
4. Most particularly successful users of social networks are helped by CMM specialists and copywriters in promoting their profiles.
5. Building and maintaining your brand and being popular is a skill that is trained through knowledge, effort and quite a lot of time.
If even after all of the above, your inner voice continues to excitedly say that something needs to be done – do it. Start small - define a goal that you will pursue using social networks. Create a minimum program and start manifesting yourself. Any skill, just like a muscle, needs to be trained for results. And remember that on the other side of the monitor there are the same people with similar problems, fears and worries. Keep it simple and have a good trip!