It’s very difficult nowadays to find someone who doesn’t use social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, but do we really need such apps as much as we think? While such apps offer some advantages and do a great job when it comes to making us addicted to them through their algorithms, the truth is that society was perfectly fine 15 or 20 years ago when social media apps didn’t exist.
In fact, we can say that life without social media apps is better, and we have some strong arguments to support that claim. Let’s cut to the chase:
More authentic interactions between people
If you also have the feeling that most people nowadays don’t have authentic interactions with one another and that they get along only due to some sort of feeling of social obligation, welcome to the club! Most people nowadays seem more separate and careless than ever, and one of the reasons might be the addiction to social media. If you find someone’s Facebook profile, for instance, you are less inclined to meet that person and talk in real life simply because you have the illusion that you know everything there is to know about the person. That’s sad, as it robs us of true interactions.
No smartphone addiction
Many people deal with smartphone addiction, and one of the reasons is social media. That’s because many of those folks stare at their phone all day because they scroll through apps such as Instagram and TikTok, which, as we said, have a great talent for keeping you addicted to them.
A lot of people complain that they can’t make new friends or a life partner at the cinema or a restaurant simply because everybody is staring at their smartphones too much. Some even deal with the annoying situation in which they go out with someone, and that other person is too busy staring at their smartphone instead of actually getting involved in a conversation.
If we look back in time, 15 or 20 years ago, people weren’t addicted to their smartphones because there were no smartphones. We can’t even say that they were addicted to their “ancient” mobile phones, as they were a lot more present and open to conversation in the real world.
More honesty
A lot of social apps, probably all of them, have zero tolerance for what they call “hate speech” or “bullying.” You can easily guess how easy it is to fall into either one of those categories, even though your intention is just to tell the truth about a certain subject and not to throw cuss words or foul language. Where’s the freedom of speech if you get banned, blocked, and reported each time you say that a specific movie is bad or that a specific person is full of baloney?
On social media, you have to be all sugar, spice, and everything nice, or else you’re out. You need the right to speak the truth, even if it makes some people feel uncomfortable. Society understood this simple concept long ago when social media apps weren’t around.
There’s also the aspect that sharing your private information on social media raises privacy concerns, as some might see that information even without your consent. Let’s suppose that you’re friends with someone on Instagram, for instance. Even if you set your profile to private, you may never know when that friend of yours shows a discussion with you to another person standing nearby. In today’s world, where practically everybody has a smartphone, it’s very easy to get your private information seen by people you don’t like.
In other words, the world without social media was a bit more honest, while there was less concern when it comes to privacy.
Reduced distractions
Remember what we said about social media apps doing an excellent job of making us addicted to them? Such an addiction can affect productivity, given that the user feels a constant urge to check his notifications. Many of those notifications from social media apps are redundant.
Life was much simpler when there was no social media around to constantly catch their attention, as people were more focused on what mattered to them.
The domination of YouTube
You can learn a lot of useful stuff from YouTube, but unfortunately, the platform has fallen a lot in recent years due to the rise in popularity of TikTok. It is a lot more tempting for many people to watch short videos simply because they’re short than to wait 15 or 20 minutes for a YouTube video to unfold. As a result, YouTube is now trying to regain its dominance by introducing Shorts (a way to mimic what TikTok is doing) or imposing more annoying ads on its users.
YouTube can teach you a lot of things, from coding, programming, mathematics, and all the way to cooking or frying an egg if that’s what you want to learn. Furthermore, a lot of YouTubers earn significantly less money than they did because of the rise in popularity of social apps such as TikTok. It’s sad that the YouTube platform is now practically dead, as it has a lot of quality content to offer. YouTube was a lot more popular when social media apps weren’t so notorious as they are today. YouTube was launched almost two decades ago, in 2005, long before even Facebook or Instagram were around.
Ultimately, each and every person can decide if social media is good for them or not, but perhaps nobody can deny that life without such apps is better, at least when it comes to some aspects.
Tim M. Hill helped bring Digital-Overload from a weekly newsletter to a full-fledged news site by creating a new website and branding. He continues to assist in keeping the site responsive and well organized for the readers. As a writer to Digital-Overload, Tim mainly covers mobile news and gadgets.
