TELL YOUR STORY

USA

I’ve always been surrounded by social media at a young age. Throughout time, addiction came along with it and it got worse and worse. It has especially been awful this year. My social media addiction has caused me to loose my motivation in school, leading to my grades slipping. My mental health is another cause of my social media addiction. I’ve felt lost about who I am and what are my interests. I only thought of myself as a bland individual with nothing unique. This also made me not find a hobby because I use most of my time for social media. I was on YouTube one day watching a video about about pro social media vs. anti social media from the channel, Jubilee, which featured Emma Lembke. Then, I realized that my relationship with social media was toxic mentally, and I knew that I needed to change my social media usage. Because of social media, I haven’t been my authentic self. I didn’t have anything that made me stand out. The only thing I had that was an “attribute” (not really) was social media. That’s why I am here to say my story, so I can officially begin to discover who I am, and learn to appreciate the outside world.

Canada

Social media, and its role in my life is quite like a tumor. It eats away at my health, mentally and physically, and most importantly my time; time that could be better spent living. I realize, that social media is analogous to a disease because it lives off of my attention, the most important resource in life, but more importantly because it's so incredibly easy to ignore that it's the cause of your affliction. I rationalized that my life during covid was falling into a downward spiral because of my lack of exercise, terrible diet and overall apathy toward the more meaningful experiences that would once force me to dedicate my entire being to the pursuit of excellence in and of itself. The internet, and especially total strangers should not strip of you of your autonomy, however you'd like to interpret that, and the sooner people are able to realize that the burden of social media is a beast that can be conquered, the sooner people will slay it. I wish you all well.

Canada

I'm not a teenager but social media and the great internet had a huge impact on me and my social life as well. It affects me both physically and particularly mentally. For a whole year, I was beginning early in the morning (i.e. 7am) to in my unreality internet life on my computer and cell phone. Having a smoothie for lunch on my desk, I was continuing non-stop until dinner which I quickly cooked, eat and return to my internet buble where I was having multiple activities and ghost friends that lead me as far as having fraudulent activities which cost me a lot of money and went through the lost of my credit. I calculated I was spending over 15 hours/day on what I was calling my job and always hoping to legally source of income coming each week. I became very exhausted running on that unreality schedule where I was only having relation on the net. It was only me and my computer. I don't even remember when I became seriously mental sick. Somebody called the ambulance and they drove me to the hospital where I stayed (in another dimension) for 2 months and a half not remembering a thing. When I got out of the hospital, I was not able to stay alone as I were and I took a room in a residence (wi-fi) included. It took me around 6 months to even know how to operate my computer again and I had lost complete interest in social media. Today, I'm recovered from my experience and I make sure that I don't get involved too much with this fake world.

USA

As a pansexual non-binary teen, I have a lot to worry about on socal media. I've been black mailed by one of my class mates to out me(twice). I also have delt with indirect cyber-bullying from him and a few others. On the other hand, I've made a lot of online friends over social media, i feel very connected with my community now. At my small midwest school I don't know more then 5 lgbt people, online I'm friends with many! I feel that social media is 50/50; half good, half bad.

Italy

Looking back on the last few years, I’ve realized how deeply social media have influenced my relationship with food and body. I’ve started using Instagram when I was 13; at that time, I had never thought about my physical appearance: as far as I was always taught about the importance of well eating, I didn’t really use to think what I put into my body, I simply enjoyed it! Daily usage of social media certainly changed it: perfect and unrealistic skinny bodies were all I saw every time I logged into Instagram. Even tough I had always been confident about how I looked (and I need to thank my mom for this), I started to question myself. “Should I lose weight?”, “Maybe I need to stop eating this” and “I’m not hungry anymore” we’re all I could think about. It’s just now, at the age of 17, that I truly understand the danger I could’ve gone through; what really scares me is remembering how I have never been overweight, even though social media were making me think I was.

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Yesterday I set a goal to never use any social media on my laptop again as long as my laptop remains my workstation for college. I already failed that goal. I became addicted to my laptop, my phone being only a secondary and minor problem. I find the keyboard, bigger screen and multiple tabs multitasking so much more appealing to me. Uninstalling your phone's apps and only using them on your PC makes sense only when you aren't quarantined in your room with your laptop on 24/7, which at the same time is supposed to be the place you allow deep work and flow states to occur when studying. However, this is impossible when it is also the source of something I've been lacking this entire year: social interaction. I never voice chatted with a stranger online ever, yet I swear I could do it for hours and hours on end. I really just want to talk to people, that's all. But because the quality and fullness of the human interaction is diminished by the boundaries of technology, I crave higher quantity, which means constantly being plugged in and checking for that new conversation starter, in a way that resembles consuming entertainment more than real conversations. I think than underneath all the likes, new notification, retweets, upvotes, comments, there is an underlying human desire trying to be fulfilled: not feeling alone.

USA

A couple years ago, I had a moment which really opened my eyes to my social media addiction. Lying in bed sick, I spent 21 hours on one day on my phone. I remember checking my screen time, sure that was impossible. While 12 of those hours were spent unhealthily binge-watching Game of Thrones, 9 were on various social media platforms, from Instagram to Snapchat. I realized I had gotten nothing from the day except for making myself feel sicker than I already was. The ability to mindlessly scroll for so long made me forget how much time I was wasting while giving myself a massive headache. What I realized was that I never once came out of an experience scrolling through social media where I felt satisfied or happy afterwards. Nowadays my screen time is nowhere near as bad, but I do genuinely think that social media addictions are addictions, and they should be treated as such.

USA

As a young female constantly on social media, I did not see myself as beautiful in the slightest. I was unaware of the heavy editing and toxicity of the body standards present on the apps, but what I was aware of was how I was not meeting that preset standard. I wish someone would have told me to never get on the apps as a young, highly insecure 7th grader. It has taken years of self discipline and reflection to get to a place where I can look in the mirror and smile. To all the young girls out there struggling, know you are not alone, and you are beautiul.