Anti-social media

I was on my drive back to school after Fall Break, and I was really itching to Instagram a picture of the sunset.

That sounds innocent enough, except for the fact that it wasn’t even dusk yet. I was planning on taking an Instagram of the sunset when it happened so I could get a bunch of likes, because we all know how the Instagram community just loves a good sunset picture.

Wait. I’m Ike Hajinazarian. I don’t do nature. I don’t do sunsets. And I sure as hell hope I’m not basic enough to Instagram a picture of the sunset simply because I knew it would get a solid amount of likes.

I had stopped caring about what content I was posting on social media. I had stopped caring if it actually reflected my life. All I cared about was likes.

And that, my friends, was my cue to leave.

So I took a week off. A week off all social media — a week with absolutely no Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, or even Vine, just so I could pause and think about what it was actually doing to my life.

I thought I would feel liberated.

I didn’t ... at all.

I felt anxious the entire week. I felt intense FOMO (fear of missing out). I had nothing to do in those hundreds of small two-minute gaps of time normally filled with a quick refresh of the 500-some people I follow on Twitter.

I felt like I had lost my voice.

I realized Twitter is a box we choose to lock ourselves in with 500 of our friends, where we all scream the thoughts going through our heads.

Nobody really listens to us, and we don’t really listen to anybody, but it comforts us to scream.

Taking a week off helped me learn the most fundamental functions of social media in my life.

Social media serves two purposes: communication and validation.

Communication is why social media was created, and communication — a feeling of complete connection with the outside world — is what I missed most this past week.

It’s truly wonderful how we can all share our lives with each other without direct contact. If I ever, say, got engaged, my close friends and family would get a call or text, but my other two thousand acquaintances would just have to learn from Twitter or Facebook. And both parties involved are mutually fine with that.

Validation is what we’ve gleaned from overusing and abusing social media.

Whenever I post on Instagram, the social media I believe to be most validation-seeking, or even on Facebook, I check my phone like a maniac, a dozen, 30,  100 times to see who all had liked it.

And therein lies the problem.

I’d stopped caring about the content of my posts, because I’d take each “like” not to be a “like” for the picture itself, but rather, a “like” for me. And that makes me feel good about myself.

That, folks, is why we post selfies. And basic sunset pictures.

Social media is one of the most amazing methods of communication ever created, but we’ve taken it too far.

Take a step back, and understand why you use social media the way you do.

As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

I’m assuming he was talking about Instagram.

­— ihajinaz@indiana.edu
Validate columnist Ike Hajinazarian on Twitter @_IkeHaji.