3 Unhealthy Social Media Obsessions I Gave Up On

In today’s world especially with the existence of social media, people tend to be obsessed with things that they know deep inside they don’t need, but they are just crazy about them because they are in and trendy.

I was not an exception to these people; I did want to do what others were doing for the sake of people’s approval. It was an illusion.

In this article, I am going to list 3 things that I stopped myself from being obsessed with, after realizing that it is just what social media needs me to be and not what I need to be. 

Buttocks/Abs

If you are on Instagram, you are probably familiar with all the girls who pose their buttocks for the camera to show how big it is or how round it is. 

Same with the Abs. They also tend to show how flat they are, or how muscly they are.

I would look at those pictures and go crazy over them. The obsession of having a butt like that and abs like those grew inside of me. I even used to exercise for a respectful period of time just to achieve that look. Shallow. 

But then, Those Instagram photos crossed the limits, especially the buttocks. Literally, they showed nothing in the photo or in the video but their butts, besides doing squats in videos on purpose.

Looking at all that felt disgusting to me. I did not feel comfortable seeing those photos/videos.

The obsession I developed began to fade. Do I really need to do it that way? Short answer, No, Definitely Not.

I started to follow more authentic people like Lindsay Camerik and Jack Hanrahan. They helped me to shift my thinking, fitness is not about the look but it is more about how you feel and what you can do. 

Now, I don’t care about training a certain area of my body to achieve the look the media want. Instead, I train for myself, and for my betterment. And you should too.

Followers

We all been there, being obsessed with numbers.

When I first created my Facebook account. and looked at how many friends did people on my list have I started to develop an obsession over increasing my friend’s count. My goal was 300, my next goal was 500, and then 1000.

Funny thing, I have not even reached the first 3 hundred till now. They all were illusions, nonsense goals in my head. Shallow Again.

I spent years living in frustration because I could not increase my friend’s number, this reflected on how many likes I used to get for the posts I shared, they were few. I started to feel ashamed of what I shared and of when people ask me “How many friends do you have on Facebook?” 

My second obsession with numbers was on Instagram. Yes, I wanted to grow my followers and even worse get verified. How, for the god’s sake?

In my first account on Instagram, I bought followers I even paid for some services that like photos and follow/unfollow other people on my behalf just to get more exposure.   

It did not work; I did not get the follower count that I was longing for as I started to lose the followers as soon as I got them. No one authentically liked my photos, and I did not get verified. No, I am not a public figure to get verified. I was silly.

After learning it the hard way, stressing myself over illusions and paying money for these illusions. I decided to give up on Facebook completely and delete my first Instagram account.

After some time, I created my second and my current Instagram account.

In fact, I thought, instead of giving it up completely, it actually would be a great platform to share my work. So I made a new account to share my photos and words on it.

I am satisfied was the 2 hundred followers I have now. Because they are all authentic and real. I am real.

Attention

I wanted huge numbers, therefore; I wanted attention.  

Though I am not the person who likes attention, again social media made me think that in order to feel worthy and important I need to have attention. 

I always wished to wake up to an X Number of direct messages on Facebook and an XXX Number of people posting on my wall on my birthday. This did not happen, I barely woke up to a message from the people on my list. And on my birthday, very few people posted on my wall.

You can tell already. That was frustrating, especially with comparing myself to other people who got these enormous numbers of friends on Facebook.

As time goes by and as I was going through lots of tough times, I came to realize that this all did not matter. Numbers and social media goals are nothing but illusions that can be toxic and make a negative impact on your real life. I know it sounds cliche, but it is just how it is.

I let go completely of these obsessions, and instead, I focused on the actual goals and on the genuine people I have who love me. A word from them is worth millions of direct messages and a single birthday wish from one of them is worth a trillion people posting on my wall.

To Sum Up

We all been there, but what matters is being aware of those social media traps and either to get out of them or avoid them. It is not fair to say that we have to leave social media, as using social media is beneficial for lots of people, the thing is we mustn’t forget ourselves and the surrounding people in the process. We have to use social media smartly and make it work in our favor.

In the end, I have not written this trying to idealize myself as the girl who does not have a problem whatsoever with social media and with her phone in general, I still have challenges that I am going through, I just shared this because it feels great to relate to someone who is going through the same thing. It feels incredibly good to be connected.