Every day, we wake up and look at our phones. If you're like me and set your alarm to the last possible minute, you probably skip the social media scroll. On the days with no alarm
Or a delayed waking up because I don't go to work at 5, you end up starting your day with Facebook and Twitter and probably snapchat and Instagram. We've become obsessed with seeing what everyone else is doing and either being mad because they're doing better than us or happy we're doing better than them. We scroll through our Facebook and Instagram feeds and roll our eyes at the ones complaining about everything, like the latest engagement or pregnancy, and get caught up in the latest political argument. We edit picture posts to make ourselves look that best or if we are a little insecure, put a funny face up instead of the generic smile. But when did we become so concerned with letting people know every bit of our lives or judge how much people accept what we're doing by "likes"? We seek every bit of approval, from anywhere, regardless if its approval of our happiness or approval of our complaint. We scroll past the latest news stories, most sad or videos of things happening thousands of miles away that we have no control over that show homeless people or the latest rebel or the war we can't stop. We see posts that start with TW (trigger warning) because we can't stand to see something that might offend us because we've been coddled or think we deserve to live in a sheltered world from anything evil and need a safe space for everything. (Disclaimer, safe spaces are good for things like people praying or for privacy, but trigger warnings for day to day things, not so much. We like to control others more than we should)
We've become an overly sensitive, overly validated, overly argumentative society without trying to. Sometimes I think we share too much online, yet here I am writing a blog. Sometimes I think we need a break from social media and need to learn to take down the filter of our lives and just live our own lives. With social media, we no longer have a break from the outside world. With email on our phones, we no longer have a break from work. With the overwhelming sense of being watched or that people are lurking around the corner waiting to wreak havoc and chaos, we no longer feel safe to do the things we once did, like play outside or let kids play outside by themselves or go somewhere within a phone because you don't know what might happen.
With all our sensitivity, we still don't teach do no harm, we teach how not to get harmed or what to do if something happens. Bejng prepared isn't bad, but how many people do you know who have pepper spray or know how to hold their keys in their hand as a weapon just in case?
This post went in a few different directions (thank you stream of consciousness.. Also people don't know how to spell things anymore and phones just enable that more than they should), but my overall point is let's stop being so obsessed with everyone else's lives and opinions and stop comparing where we're at in life compared to others. Let's turn back the dial a bit on technology and take a break from looking at a screen all day and start getting outside more (germs build
Immunity). I think it's time we take a few lessons from 20 years ago.
It's time to regress in technology and progress in society. We need to evolve our generations and fix ourselves as a whole and be more open minded in regards to seeing both sides and take a lesson from when we were 5 and work together.
