This article was originally published in mycity4kids.com
One morning as I got up, I instantly felt bored.
Bored to get up and enter into another day full of monotony.
As a customary routine, I picked my phone from the nightstand and switched on the mobile data. Several icons of all possible social media platforms appeared on my screen, suggesting numerous unread messages.
I felt bored again. This time, bored stiff!
I kind of….already knew what most of them are going to be about. Some forwarded jokes, in my Whatsapp ‘girl-gang’ group pictures of shoes, bags or dresses that my friends shopped and wanted to share, in the ‘all-mom’ group of my daughter’s class, discussion about the heavy workload on children & exchange of homework sheets (yes, they actually do that!), quite a few ‘likes’ & ‘comments’ on the photo of the pizza I made for dinner, which I enthusiastically posted on Facebook, couple of friend requests, numerous newsletters from all sorts of online shopping sites & much more of similar stuff.
Suddenly a strange thought flashed in my mind. Why not do something which I am not used of doing for years now? Why not FAST on social media for a day?
So, that’s exactly what I did – disabled the mobile data and moved on with my day. While I was getting ready and doing my daily chores, I felt something is amiss. Something is weird. My phone was exceptionally quite – no buzzing, no beeps. I was having this intense urge to pick my phone and check my updates. I could relate to how smokers feel when they quit. Irritable, restless & lost!
As the day progressed, I started to become calmer and kind of begin to enjoy it. At the red light signal, instead of ‘whatsapping’, I looked out of the window and admired the lovely weather and overcast sky. In the office, my distractions were less and work – more productive. During lunch time, I forcefully took my friend’s mobiles and kept them away, so not only me but everybody else ate in peace without frequently glancing on their mobiles.
By now, I was totally unperturbed with no urgency to respond to unnecessary chats or answer silly comments. No pressure of being seen ‘online’ & still not replying, no ‘two blue tick marks’ making me stressed to reply ASAP.
In the evening, I sat with my daughter & we chatted about her day-my day. That day the conversation was two-way & more real unlike other days when only she used to blabber and I used to be occasionally nodding and giving some not-so-genuine exclamatory expressions – me being busy with my phone, Whatapping, Facebooking, Tweeting….
Finally, my daughter said, “Mamma, can we do this all the time? Can you not look at your phone when we talk?
And that was it! It struck me so hard. What are we doing with our lives, to the people we love, our friends? Why are we killing the pleasure of real-time communication?
Lesson learnt – Social media is just a mode of communication in life; Social media is NOT LIFE!
We need to ‘FAST’ on social media more often!
image courtesy Daily Tech Fix