Take Control: A Way to Stop Clinging To Social Media

by Ellie Balangue - Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Let’s admit it. Social media esp facebook plays a role in our lives. Be it for past time or to show everyone how our life was or at the moment or what are our plans for tomorrow, or using it as a dump for all of our photos (even if they downgrade the quality), facebook has a lot of use for everyone. It became a way to connect with old friends and relatives that lives half-way across the world or to wherever we don’t know they now live or relatives we don’t even know existed: we find them on facebook.

As facebook became popular, it became one of the many source of being unhappy and comparison and to always have a life-check on how are you doing with your lives compare to others esp your friends or college classmates to High School and even from Elementary days. With total honesty, there is nothing wrong with us checking how are we now in our lives, but what’s make it so wrong is that, we tend to compare and feel ourselves so miserable esp if they are doing well than what we are now. We end up whining, we end up doing what they do even if its beyond our means, we go our extra way to make everything we have now gone to worse situation.

First of all, I am saying these stuff and writing this because I’ve been there and happened to me and I know that this is happening to most of us. Second, I am writing this to tell you more of my story and how I handle it, of course not at all figure it out before and it is not easy, but to somehow give you an idea on how to get away from it and perhaps help you with what you are going through and yes to give you an inspiration that you are not at all helpless and not alone on this.

Let me tell you a bit about myself, this going to be shorten to give you a broad scenario on where am I going and where I am getting this from. I started my first year college at one of the top most state university in the country but did not finished my 2^nd semester there and transfer to one of the known university at U-Belt and after 2 years in college I stop for a year because of financial problem and that’s the start of my anxiety and depression (I will later discuss this on other post) along with other factors such as ptsd that affects my mental health even more.

After a year, I got back and continue my college, during this time, my friends and classmates are now on their internship, I don’t see them at school anymore and have no time hanging out with them since we have different time schedule. I only have news from them through social media and that is facebook. Facebook at that time is gaining popularity because of so much features and games as well.

Through facebook, I see their posts and photos and how are they enjoying their life outside school and doing well on their internship and all that. And I am here, stuck at school, attending same class they used to attend year before. Me stuck at school with new faces I haven’t seen before and doesn’t know one single soul. It feels more degrading and I really lost the will to continue but end up doing the same routine everyday just to continue with my life. And everyday I see posts from people I used to know or hang out with they are doing well with their life.

I focused on comparing my life with them. I feel much miserable. I started blaming my Parents, I started hating myself, cutting myself whenever I feel so down, my grades are failing, I started to lose hope and question everything in my life, I have no purpose. I feel I have no purpose. I hate my course, I just hate everything. My temper gone worse and I easily got annoyed and the list goes on.

I don’ t know when it started, but I did, I did notice that my temper and my mood gone worst whenever I see a post and started comparing mine to them, I decided out of the blue to deactivate from facebook and it became a habit to distance myself from it whenever I feel I taking more time using it and browsing my feed. I deactivate. Yes, just like that. And by doing so, it changes a lot about my life.

I started to focus on myself even more rather than watching what others are doing in their life, started to focus on what I love to do rather than what others are into now. It started for a week then months, then when I feel I already composed myself, I got back online.

I never said that it will totally gone for good but at some point it helps. And it really helps me a lot. Being away from facebook makes me realize more about myself and how to handle things. I have more time focusing on my thoughts alone and give importance to it and just analyzing myself and what I want to do. Of course, there are times that I still compare myself with their achievements, that my thoughts still fly to the past, that maybe if I didn’t stop maybe I am like them now, earning money, eating whatever I craved for, visiting places I wanted to see and so on, but that’s not the life given to me. I cannot go back to the past anymore and what I have now is the present I have and I realized I just have to live with it.

Whenever I feel down and started comparing myself again and back at that stage again I always deactivate. Then I learned about unfollowing people and pages, then I did that. I put notification with people only so dearest to me. I follow pages that makes me smile and laugh. I take control. I think that’s really the term and the key to it. Take control. You have to take control of your life and not the other way around. Don’t let them control you especially your thoughts and mood. You can mute them, you can sort what you want to see. Take control of your life and you will definitely see changes.

I know there are people who are not drawn so much to facebook and I deeply admire that, but for those who became so attached to facebook that it eats their everyday life and think that there’s no hope for them, think again, there’s always a solution for everything.

Just remember these:

Take control. Filter and sort what you want to see. You can choose if you want to see the bad or the good. Inspirational or not. Change the way you think, its either those posts is to help you get better and feel worst about your situation.