In Defence of Social Media
Another way to use social media and avoid acid leakages.
People who followed me know how much I don’t like social media.
I still don’t use them much today. In fact, I’m on another break after using it for a week or two. Though I used it to contact my friends, and that’s it.
But really, perhaps social media isn’t all bad.
I know what I said in the past, and for someone who has been on and off most of the time, oblivious to the online world, I still prefer being off social media. And even if I do open social media, it’s to check my messages and avoid the feed.
After coming back again, maybe it’s a good thing that this stuff does exist too.
If done right, you can TRULY reconnect with your old pals
I recently got to talk with my old buddies from college via Instagram.
I posted an Instastory where I was off on a vacation to Bali. At that time, I was slowly recovering from burnout, and being there felt therapeutic. It was a small gift after burning myself out, so I decided to snap a picture of myself and posted it as a story online, being in a nice place and getting away from all the cities.
I didn’t really expect anyone to reply back since I pretty much lost contact with nearly everyone on my social media followers.
But somebody replied back, and it was from the people I least expect to get any replies from.
And that was when we started talking again.
I asked how they were doing, where are they now, and when do we want to meet up again since it has been such a long time. It was a nice virtual chat, and it felt like nothing changed between us despite the world changing.
If done right, social media filters your friends faster
When I first started having social media accounts, I added as many friends as possible.
Now, I feel like they are no more than a bunch of contact lists I only managed to contact only 5% of them. It’s sad, but I suppose that’s life.
I tried to reach out to them through their stories, seeing if they are willing to reply back or are willing to continue our conversations.
Some did manage to reply to me back faster and would prolong our chats. It was there I find that it’d be cool to meet up face-to-face again and have a good conversation like we used to do, and I know that there will be no awkward tension between us at the reunion.
But most wouldn’t.
I tried to reach out to my school friends in the past on Instagram, to see if things could be like they used to be. But our chats would sit there, and we’d reply to each other super late, and it was clear that our chats cannot last any longer.
And thus, unless some miracle could change our tension, we had to accept that our past should remain in the past.
If done right, social media helps you gain awareness about yourself
I owe part of my career to social media.
I got to know new tools, materials, and ideas to add to my skills. I could reach out to people from all over the world to learn a lot of things such as writing and video editing.
Plus, it’s also a great place to market your portfolio.
In order to show what I can do, I mostly shared my work on Linkedin in hopes of gaining more attention to my work so that people would hire me. And so far, it helped my blog traffic, and I got a new job.
This also applies to entrepreneurs.
No matter how small your business is, having social media helps them grow. Of course, if done strategically.
But social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok have been helping a lot of businesses, freelance work, and many others to grow. The algorithm truly pushed them to meet new markets, and that’s a great thing.
It costs less, and it’s instant to introduce your products and services online.
Social media is the best place to find memes
I miss looking at memes.
I have been watching House of the Dragons lately, and when I look for their memes, I found them a lot on Instagram. So, I would scroll to read their memes and just have a fun time with them.
It has been great so far! I found that maybe I’ve been a little too dull and bitter that I forgot how witty the people of the internet can be.
I’d share them with my close friends and would talk a lot about the context of the memes.
It’s also how I stayed in touch with my friends because of pop culture memes that keep us together.
And I am grateful for that.
A better way to use social media
I recently got back to Instagram, and I’ve been able to avoid its acid as of late.
I still don’t spend a lot of time there, but I’ve been able to come back and feel safe.
Here are several ways to still use social media and reduce your chances of gaining their acid:
- Set your time limit — Apps such as Instagram have this feature to set time limits the way you want them.
- Mute people — Let’s face it. There are just times when you don’t want to know what other people are doing, but you can’t unfollow them because you know them in real life, even though you don’t meet them that often anyway.
- “Like” the business accounts — I think the algorithm may realize that I prefer to see the news in my feed, and they did just that. Now, whenever I open the app, the first thing I see is what’s on the news. News is not usually nice, but it’ll do to know what’s going on.
- Sending memes to friends — My relationship with my friends and family is better when I share memes with them. There are a lot of memes on social media, so it’s a nice getaway from the toxic positivity in it.
Social media doesn’t have to be an enemy.
As stated in the past, there is nothing wrong with social media. It’s just the contents that have been becoming toxic as of late.
But if we use them in another way, perhaps they can be an antidote to our own life.
I owe my professionality and social life to social media, even though I do have some problems with it.
Then again, it’s not social media’s fault that they turned toxic as of late. It’s the contents posted there that turned it that way.
But at the end of the day, people are still using them since it’s still popular.
So why not try to make it an opportunity for something?
