How Is Social Media Affecting People's Life During The Lockdown?

Little did we know what the future holds for us. 2020 has been the most challenging and depressing year for all. People being locked up inside their homes for most of the year battling with anxiety, depression, and whatnot. This indeed is the most difficult phase. The future is still bleak. Our life has definitely come to standstill. We are living in an exceptionally different life. Life still seems a nightmare.

But people have already found their escape during this hard time.  

Social media being one of them. At this time when we can’t step out of our house, social media helped us in staying connected to our close ones. From doing random challenges on Instagram and tagging friends to just scrolling the feed we led our own way of delight.

Keeping our egoistic nature aside we have learned messaging people first to fill our void (doesn’t apply to everybody). We have become more social in a different way thanks to COVID 19. Making groups on different platforms and sharing memes is helping us to cope with not so social life.

These groups have become our virtual hangout place where we crack jokes reacting through emojis but still miss actual laughs at the same time. More than an escape it has become our little world of comfort.

But we should not forget that it is still a virtual world which is nowhere close to our real world. Social media do come with its consequences. Have you ever went through FOMO - FEAR OF MISSING OUT? It is a form of anxiety you get when you’re scared of missing out on a positive experience that someone else is having.

What FOMO could mean at this time? Not being tagged by your friends or not doing anything productive or maybe not having people around virtually. This feeling could even lead to depression or anxiety. The more you compare your life to others the more you feel miserable.

You start denying your own life. Why? Because you think everyone is having a better life than me. But at times we seriously need to tap ourselves that everything we see on social media is not real. A person who is reacting through happy emojis may not be happy. A person who is constantly active on social media maybe just trying to fill his hollow life like you.

According to a survey, the average time spent by a teenager on social media has increased by 5 hours during this pandemic and the screen time is up by 100%. Also, spending this much time on social media platforms affects your mental health as well. 

So what’s the way out? Should we just get ourselves out of all social media platforms? Everybody knows this is way too difficult to boycott these apps when we’re so addicted.

Here are the basic ways you can do to work on your social media addiction:

• Call your friends and have some real talk to know what is actually going on in their life. It's better than checking their Instagram story.
• Find a hobby and work on that.
• Try indulging more in household chores.
• Start reading books.
• Start from reducing your screen time by 30 min, to begin with, and then aim for more.
• Take short breaks from social media on alternative days. It will definitely help to relax your mind.
• During this lockdown, you can't go out but you can go on your rooftop without your cell phone, to have some fresh air.

You might have already known all these steps mentioned above but could you stop yourself from indulging more. Then there is a simpler way to look at it. Stop checking on your virtual family and then see who actually gives about you and your absence on your favorite social platform. If there is none, you will automatically understand the difference between the virtual and real worlds. And if there are few, then you have surely filtered out your real connections. Disconnect with the rest and your screen time will automatically come down.

Reality could be harsh but your life will be better. Don't you think?