A NEW STUDY has found that American college students are spending 12 hours a day engaging with media including using social media, watching TV and listening to music.
Whichever way you break that down that’s a lot of time to spending on social media and we reckon it’s not just those college students that have a problem.
Having thought about it, we reckon that social media isn’t all chatting with your mates and sharing funny tweets.
It could also be ruining your life in some slightly scary ways, here are just some of them:
1. You can never properly enjoy a TV show
Via Drama Fever Blog
Lots of TV shows are mad for us to use the hashtag they’ve thrown on screen and many of us have used Twitter and Facebook in conjunction with watching a show.
It can be very entertaining, especially the creative ways in which people can take apart whatever reality TV we’re all glued to of an evening.
But also it can be exhausting.
TV is supposed to be our escape from the pressures of everyday life, not an excuse to chat a bunch of people online.
Sometimes we don’t want to “get social” we just want to curl up in ball and silently weep as a young boy and his dog tell their story on Britain’s Got Talent.
2. Missing out on things while walking down the street
Image via Shutterstock
We all like to grab a quick look out our phone while roaming the streets and perhaps do a good “Just out walking here peeps, lol” tweet but what if we’re missing out something nice that isn’t on our phone screen?
What if the sun is shining but we’re too busy with Vine to notice?
What if a puppy runs up to us looking for affection and we’re retweeting so much we miss it?
Or, what if the most beautiful person in the world approaches and demands that you marry them and you are so wrapped up in seeing what photos Kim Kardashian likes on Instagram that you ignore them?
This is terrifying.
3. Your food goes cold
You could argue that the obsession with posting pictures of our food means that we will only ever cook things that look nice and can rake in the likes and in a roundabout way we’re eating better than ever.
But what if you spent so much time trying to get the filters on your picture of your latest dish to look right that your food went cold?
We could be ruining our dinners forever.
4. Forever posing
Karel Navarro/AP/Press Association Images
Selfies are all the rage now, from the standard “pout in the bathroom mirror with your girlies” one on a night out to the forever cringe inducing “OMG I’M SO TIRED HERE IS A PIC OF ME IN BED CURLED UP WI ME PILLOH XxXxX” shots.
The downside to our social media selife obsession is that we are forever posing and pouting at every given opportunity.
If you are say, a model and your job is to look hot professionally than we get this but the rest of us are going to tire ourselves with all the constant duckfaces and attempts at being beautiful.
We should leave it to the professionals.
5. All concerts are forever ruined
Hussein Malla/AP/Press Association Images
If you go to any big music festival or concert the dreaded sea of phones and cameras is an unfortunate part of the experience.
We reckon social media plays a big part and adds to the peer pressure to talk about the experience via your phone as opposed to watching the gig.
If the gig your at is “going off” as much as you say then you should be too busy dancing non-stop to tweet about it.
Yet if we don’t post on social media about it, how will people know we enjoyed it?
The dilemma of it all.
6. Life is a never ending status update
The worst thing about constantly tweeting etc is that all the imaginary tweets and Facebook status updates you write in your head.
It is a bit like having a narrator in your head constantly throwing out irritating one liners, as if the Carrie Bradshaw voiceover from Sex and the City has taken up permanent residence in your brain.
Very difficult.
7. Hashtags
You have to constantly engage with them, you have to think about the right places to use them (hint: not Facebook) and you have to cope with people using them in actual, day-to-day conversation.
Jaysus.
8. A dodgy sleep pattern
Image via Shutterstock
We’ve all had the bright idea to read an article on our phone in bed, then tweet the link so people can read it and then being on some kind of social media app while lying in bed.
Then when you finally put your phone away you can’t sleep because you have the sound of a trillion tweets flooding around your head.
9. You don’t talk to your actual friends.
You can’t beat the thrill of getting to hang out with your best mates or significant other for some quality time.
And by quality time we mean taking your phones out and checking your Facebook while your friend tries to get to the next level of Candy Crush Saga.
We now seem to be spending more time on our phones than talking to our friends when we see them in person but who cares did you see what Rihanna just put on Instagram?
10. Fighting with strangers
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The healthy debate that came from Facebook and Twitter postings can be very enjoyable whether you compare favourite restaurants in your area or debate the finer points of an episode of Mad Men.
But realistically most of our time on social media is spent arguing with strangers, who will never agree with us all while trying to convey your tone and point to someone who probably has no interest in listening to you.
It is exhausting yet we do it every day.
Imagine if we were this aggressive with people in face to face conversations.
You’d never leave the house.
11. Everyone knows your business
Nowadays you don’t have to catch up with people when you see them about where they’ve gone for dinner recently, how they are and other pleasantries because they’ve put it all on the internet.
Then you realise that you’ve done the same.
Before we all FaceInstaTwitterGrammed ourselves to bits you could easily spend whole days without letting everyone know where you had just checked into or what your plans for the day were.
We were all a good bit more mysterious and probably better off.
You know when celebrities complain in hour long tell-all interviews with say, Oprah about how weird it is that everyone knows your business?
That’s how we feel, except Oprah doesn’t want to talk to us about it.
Awful.
