Social Media: Angel on Your Shoulder or Monkey on Your Back?

Oh social media – how we love you and hate you all at the same time.  You are the boyfriend who is no good for us, yet we can’t walk away.  The mistress who pulls us away from the ones who truly loves us.  You are the wreck we don’t want to see, yet can’t look away from.  How do you hold so much power over us?

Don’t get me wrong, you aren’t all bad.  No person or thing is all good or all evil.  We live in shades of gray.  Balancing with one foot on either side,  never knowing what moment will be the one to tip us over.

Yes, you do keep us connected.   And sure, that can be good.   If we live far from family and friends, you allow us to still know what’s going on in each other’s lives.  Thanks to you we get to see grandchildren growing up, friends getting married, and pets joining  families.

If we have demanding lives that don’t leave time for socializing, your flexibility lets us log on at midnight once the tasks of the day are finally done.  You make us feel like we have hot social lives without even leaving our living room.

If we are introverted yet still want to maintain friendships,  you gradually inch your way into our homes so we can participate in the safety of our pajamas.  You help us feel more secure than that old phone ever did, allowing us to connect when no one else is there to harshly respond back right away.

But are you therapy, or are you the addiction masquerading as our ally?  Stealing all our time away until there is none left to share with the  reality of our lives.

The more I think of it, you add pressure to our lives.  As if we don’t already have enough on our to-do lists,  you pressure us to be “on” all the time.  We don’t always have the energy to be filled with exclamation marks and emojis.  Sometimes you just feel like a period,  you know?

Thanks to you, we now look like a bad friend if we don’t remember everyone’s birthdays.  Thanks to you, it appears we don’t care as much if we don’t comment on something that happened in someone’s life that everyone else already seems to know about. 

Now instead of being a positive by including us in knowing things,  you have flipped the game to being a negative if we miss things.  How did you become homework?

Somehow you have made us even more self- conscious, both of our flaws and our fortunes.  Instead of sharing pictures of  happy moments, we now worry what people will think of it.  Do we look too (fill in the blank)?  Does it seem like bragging? 

Now instead of being something for ourselves, a digital photo album our lives, you have become more about everyone else outside of us.  What we portray to the outside world, and how we hope we will be perceived.

And another thing,, there’s only so much time to go around.  The more time I spend trying to keep up with you, the less time I have for the people who exist in my everyday life.   The more time I’m posting and reading and responding, the less time I have for these real people in front of me.

Oh social media – you are a twist of emotions.  Do you help us feel less anxious, or do you end up leaving us more worried?  Do you pull us out of depression, or do you push us back under deeper?

I like you, so I spend time with you, then I’m with you constantly, then feel like I need you.  Then I hate you, so I try to ignore you, then I need to break free of you.  Then I forgive you, so I try to see if I can let you back in just a little again.  But you never seem satisfied with just a little of me. 

Are you the angel on my shoulder – pulling me out of my mind’s deep caverns?  Or are you the monkey on my back – pushing me down on the playground once I let my guard down? 

Oh social media…..  you are the friend my parents always warned me about.