Let's Talk About.. Social Media

SCROLL, SCROLL, SCROLL, LIKE, SCROLL, SEND MEME TO A FRIEND, SCROLL, SCROLL, NO SLEEP, UNFOLLOW, OBSESS OVER ONE SPECIFIC INFLUENCER, SCROLL. AND MOTHERFUCKING REPEAT.

Social media has permeated every single nook and cranny of my life. It informs my eating habits, my workouts at the gym, the style in which I wear my jeans (baggy or straight? I’ll let the internet decide) and most importantly of all, which mental illness I will diagnose my mother with today. I feel like the heart of social media is bad bad and more bad, but it is wearing the mask of someone who wants to be silly and goofy. It TRICKS me! It welcomes me into its loving arms and snuggles me up in a blanket as it lays me on the sofa to kiss me on the forehead. As I am tucked up all nicely I can lay there for hours and hours with the only muscular movement coming from my thumb. And for what??? I feel spectacularly gross after this indulgent period. My brain is now overloaded with a crazy amount of information it could never process.

Every time I think deeply about the internet I get a kind of depression that seeps into my bones and my brain. I can’t help but think that as a species, we are not designed for this type of living. We should be outside, gathering apples from the tallest branches of the tallest trees, dipping our little toesies in some nice lake and feeling the grass on the backs of our legs as we sunbathe. I can’t say this for sure... but I’m pretty confident that we are not supposed to be sitting inside, hunched over a device no larger than the size of my garlic crusher. Especially a device that has the power to make us feel terrible about ourselves. We need connection. We need hugs. We need to feel the wind on our cheeks, the rain on our skin. Okay okay. I'm getting a little melancholic.. But you get my point.

And my point is, we are all craving human connection whilst simultaneously denying ourselves the very thing we want so much. We think we are getting something valuable from instagram or tiktok or god forbid... facebook (baby boomers say aye). The truth is, we are not. We are not going to remember which exact herbs cure which exact disease tomorrow. We may as well have spent the evening playing scrabble with the people that are actually, physically in the room with us.

I know I am part of this problem. I love a cheeky pre-bedtime scroll. I hope we can start to value real life more than tiny screens. I dream of the day I can knock on the door of my friends house without texting them “im here” first. I dream of a device free life, but let's bereal (lol get it) we are far past that now. So better hold on tight, we are in it now baby!!!

Love from, Lily