# Social Media!
With the plethora of social media platforms and their varied spins on communicating, it is worth taking a few minutes to consider where we are.
On a positive note, social media websites facilitate our interaction with other people, allowing us to keep others abreast of our activities, enabling us to find others with shared interests and letting us easily connect with our long distance or long lost friends. Social media can give us pleasure or relieve our anxieties. It can save us from boredom.
Social media has radically changed our lives, but there may be consequences to the growth of social media.
For some of us social media moves from a convenience to an infatuation and even an addiction. We are no longer able to fully embrace an event unless we share it with friends and collect their often-superficial accolades. We never want to stop posting or tweeting and we cannot put our phones down very long before checking for the comments and posts of others.
Social media enables the rapid dissemination of information to people across our networks. False information, misleading information, hurtful information may get treated equally with honest and complementary information. There is the constant chance of bullying.
Our devices may start to control our attention as we continually tune into social media. This leads us to problems like not spending enough time in the presence of those we care about, reckless behavior while driving or moving about, embarrassing moments while taking selfies or our posting of malicious comments we might not ordinarily have said.
Are you guilty of some of social media’s sins? These steps will help you keep things in proper perspective and reduce self-inflicted stress:
If you find yourself spending more and more time on social media and less and less time aware of those around you, take a step back and see yourself from an outsider’s perspective.
Limit your postings to once or twice a day.
Don’t spend all your time creating majestic media moments, instead take a quick picture and then enjoy the real moment and the not posed experience.
Take a regular daily downtime from your devices. You may be surprised but the world gets along without you.
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