Personal struggles shared over a well brewed cup of coffee. Challenging, well meant arguments with respected friends. Countless hours reading countless pages of well written, rich material. Restless nights, wrestling with the implications of reality.  These have been some of the greatest moments for me in 2016. 

Despite the chaos of American culture, it truly has been a great year for me. But there is one habit that I partook in this past year that greatly irritates me. I am sickened by how much time I spent on social media in 2016, and I really do not want to have the same regret next year nor develop a dominant, useless addiction that will continue throughout my life. Thus, I have decided to do what few millennials have; to delete my social media apps from my devices. Admittedly, I do not know how long term this will be. I do, however, have strong reasons for leaving the cyber-social world right now.

My first reason for doing this is a simple one; time. As a college student and developing adult, I am both immersed in academic study and new responsibilities. A lot of things are changing in my life, and I want to be able to handle them well. Social media is simply a distraction from these matters.

The second reason I have is more weighty. I feel as though the more I am on social media, the less I can relate to people in person. And I do not believe this problem to be limited to me. I remember, as a kid, whenever there was a get together, the sitting would be full of lively discussion. People would spend hours conversing over many various topics, and thus build stronger relation to one another. Today, on the other hand, it seems that when people get together  the conversion is rather quick and dull. Any new societal developments are almost instantly on display for the whole world to see through social media. Due to this, most conversations, that I observe, go something like this: “Hey did you know (blank)?” . . . “Yes, I saw that!” Have we lost the ability to converse and reason over various issues due to a continual, independent stream of information? I do not want this to be the case in my life. I would rather be out of the know and forced to have an “inconvenient” conversation with someone than slowly lose the ability to hold worthy dialogue; a now all too common flaw. Now, I should clarify that social media is not all together bad here. It has given humanity a much more effective means of communication. However, social media is still relatively young in man’s existence, and it is far from being flawless. Thus, for now, I still see the cons outweighing the pros when it comes to human interaction.

My final reason is twofold. I notice that the more things I watch, read, or listen to as I scroll through social media; the less I appreciate or notice the beautiful and important things in life that bring contentment. And the less I am continent, the more I scroll through media; looking for something to fill the time. Thus, a circular pattern of addiction sets in. I don’t want to be always looking for the next thing. I want to appreciate what is already in my life rather than constantly scrolling through what is not. And honestly, I believe the reason why I and society as a whole continues to scroll through countless posts is because we do not sustain ourselves on the one thing that brings contentment: God Himself. We love scrolling daily through the things of this world, because we ourselves love the world and the things of this world. If we truly were dwelling in awe of God, would we honestly be spending so much time looking at the posts of men rather than in worship and meditation? 

In conclusion, I do not think that I can stand before God and claim that I am using the time He given me effectively, truly loving and conversing with the people He has set before me, and seeking Him first and foremost in light of my social media habits. Thus, with the perspective of eternity in mind, there is much to gain and little to lose in deleting social media right now. 

If others feel these issues to be present, I suggest they do the same. I will be keeping this blog, but only as a means for occasional engagement and writing; not as a venue to waste time watching cat videos (as I admittedly did far too often last year). If someone doesn’t get to know me because I don’t have social media, well I probably wasn’t worth knowing honestly. Happy new year, and God bless!