We all need a break
The level of saturation and overstimulation is getting out of control.
Have you ever thought of buying a flip phone and going to live to a house in the middle of the mountains all by yourself, with your only neighbours being the birds? Because I have, multiple times.
Social media is increasing and expanding every single day, and while it can be a great tool, it can also cause us great harm in some aspects. Social media allows for connection and to reach people abroad, so in case you have a business and want to increase your reach, it is great. But when it comes to content creation and posting your daily life, it has reached an extreme level in my opinion. And I’m not blaming anybody, I also do this myself sometimes, and I am aware of the consequences at a personal and broader level.
At a personal level we expose ourselves, we limit our privacy, we allow ourselves to be sucked in by a constant exposure that not only makes us less intimate, but also the people around us, our surroundings, and every moment of our lives. Because when you take a picture of your coffee with your friend and post it on social media, you’re no longer experiencing that moment for yourself, you’re not only at a café enjoying a nice cup of coffee and catching up with your friend. When you post you’re sharing that moment with everyone, you’re thinking “i’m going to get a latte so that they make coffee art and I can take a nice picture for my Instagram story”, instead of thinking “I’m going to enjoy every sip of this coffee while I listen to my friend and we have a unique moment and conversation between us”.
But this is not only about exposing your daily activities out there. That’s our own choice, whether we share it or not. However, from a broader scope, we are slowly reducing the value of everything around us. You go on social media and see a lot of travel content, people showing these incredible places they have visited, people telling you “visit these secret spots in Bali, they’re beautiful and not crowded, you’ll be alone there!” And by the time you get there, those secret spots are no longer secret, and they are crowded, everyone who saw the video wants to go there, so obviously it will no longer be secret, it will not be as charming. We appreciate the thought of you sharing that incredible spot in the middle of nowhere, but by sharing it on social media it’s no longer secret, and it will lose that spark, what you felt when you got there, that magic, that calmness due to the place being empty, you will not feel it again, or anyone for that matter, because it will get full of people looking for that incredible place. You know what I mean? It’s a dilemma, because everyone wants to know these spots, everyone wants to get away from the crowded touristy areas, so they find quiet spots, but when they do they post them on social media, so they are not quiet anymore. Sometimes it’s worth to keep things to yourself, and it doesn’t mean you’re selfish, it means you find value in what you have in front of you and you want to keep that value, that worth in it.
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Speaking of travelling, I read a post yesterday that talked about this oversharing addiction that we have now. The author of that post was absolutely right when saying that travelling has become a validation activity rather than personal experience and pleasure. By “validation activity” I mean that it has turned into something that you do to proof something to others, you travel and you take pictures to post on social media instead of taking pictures for yourself, to have a memory of the trip. And I’m not saying you should travel and not take pictures, I’m a photographer, I would never say such a thing, and since cameras exist they have been used by tourists to frame memories, but they were never posted. People before went on trips, took so many pictures, but if they posted something on Facebook it was a picture of themselves with their friends or family as a group, just for the record, it was not a carousel of 20 pictures of the same street, a picture with each of your friends individually, and a picture of every dish you ate during the trip. I don’t know what it is that we want to prove to others, but a lot of people now travel to certain places just to be able to say “I was there” and have a highlight story of that trip on their Instagram profile, but not because they actually want to go there.
We are social beings, but social means interacting with each other in the present, where we are, not losing connection with the ones next to us in order to connect with those on the other side of the planet. I feel like the enormous growth of social media has been beneficial on one side because it allows us to meet and keep in touch with people who are not around you physically, but it has become such a big thing in our lives that it is detaching us from reality.
Through social media we can meet new people, we can learn from others, we can discover new places or information. I communicate with my friends who are on the other side of the world thanks to social media. I am grateful for it, and all the technology that helps us in our daily lives, but it’s like everything else in life. Too much of it becomes harmful, nothing is good in excess. When you enter Instagram (it looks like this is a paid partnership or something from all the times I’ve mentioned it already, it’s not) it feels like every single post is bombarding you with subliminal messages telling you “come to me, this is for you, even if you don’t know it yet”. But a bunch of those messages guiding you in different directions confuse you, and you end up not knowing where to go, so you see yourself going where everybody else is going because you saw it online and they told you their version, you saw their feeling and emotion in social media, but that feeling and emotion may not be the same for you.
This is why I say we all need a break, we need to distance ourselves from this online saturation and overstimulation from other people’s lives and opinions because it will only result in chaos. Not only for us as humans, but for the whole world. Some touristic spots have been closed down because of excess of people going there. For example, Japan blocked the view of Mount Fuji from a specific spot with a huge black cloth to stop tourists from going there and protect the environment as well as local villages that become touristic through social media.
This is a complicated issue due to the enormity of the digital world, but I feel like if we don’t slow down, we will lose fascination for things, because we have seen so many places, so many possibilities online that when we see them in real life it’s not the same, we have expectations from what we have seen online and it influences our perception of reality. Plus, this world is so beautiful, and it’s great that we can share that beauty with others, but by sharing it excessively online it loses essence, it’s not that special anymore, it goes from being a hidden gem to being a place where you go, take a picture, and leave.
As much as I could talk about this for an extended amount of time, I tried to express a section of the current situation and what I have obvserved from it, but this is just a part of the loop, the first observation. I’ll let you observe the rest by yourself, and make your own conclusions.
I’m Sofia and these are my daily thoughts.
