Can't Keep My Mouth Shut - "I Just Need a Break From Social Media" Let's Discuss

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

Why do we feel we have to have a break from social media? Is it addictive? Is it all negative?  Why can't we just limit ourselves, our usage, and not allow it to make us feel so overwhelmed that we have to physically remove it off our smartphones to try mentally sort ourselves out? I discuss this and more in today's episode. Watch the full insert of Simon Sinek's interview that I reference in my episode by clicking here. 

Hello everyone, it's Nixalina and it's the Sex and Singapore City podcast. Yes to phase two! I'm so, so happy and I'm sure everyone else is as well that we can start to venture back to a normal life. Oh thank god for that. I seriously, I need a phase two diet. I've put so much weight on during lockdown. Lots of bad food and lots of alcohol. Um yeah, damn need to get my ass back to the gym anywho this episode it's about social media i want to discuss a direct quote i just need a break from social media now that was a direct quote from one of my girlfriends who um spoke to me recently and basically said she took herself off all the apps facebook tiktok instagram um just felt she needed to take a break from it all and basically because

people were giving their opinions on her lifestyle choices giving their opinions on what she posts um how yeah like what photos what she's doing in them is she out is she in whatever whatever so i feel like this is a topic that really needs to be discussed uh it could be an hours hours hours long podcast which I'm obviously not going to offer you but I really want to just sort of pick out the highlights to be honest on why we need to take a break from social media why social media drives many of us to that breaking point where we want to disable our accounts given that it's completely up to us how often we go on there it's completely up to us whether we even have it in the first place and yet some reason we feel we can't control it we feel that we have to yeah

separate ourselves from it and um it's an odd concept why do we why do we get there it's not just my girlfriend i have disabled my accounts many many many times um especially facebook many times since I think I got my Facebook account in 2007 2008 maybe yeah um when my London blog was at its highest I think I just wanted to come the hell off all of it it all got too much and that's what everyone starts feeling that's the general I mean I'm speaking for the majority here and there's many other people with many different opinions but I feel like social media becomes a burden on people it becomes overwhelming and it becomes a negative experience and um I just really want to flesh that out as to why that is the case you

know because I've been there myself and my partner's currently going through it he's like I just want to come off fucking social media like it does me no good and why is that the case why does that happen so firstly i want to refer to a very very intelligent gentleman called simon cynic and he's an american british-born american motivational speaker and he did this interview i'll put the link by the way in the the podcast um he did this interview with inside guest and he was basically doing a speech on millennials in the workplace and why millennials are unable to find joy and happiness why millennials confound uh the older generations because they reject authority they don't settle for any job that comes along they're always looking for more

they want to find a reason and they want to make an impact so part and parcel of this millennial mindset he talks about social media and now i'm well aware that the social media aspect that i'm talking about is nothing to do with age but it just so happens that we millennials you know came into light when social media was rife so but it's obviously no age boundaries but basically what simon says is that it's been and it's true it's been scientifically proven that social media gives the brain that same chemical reaction that you get when you uh say have alcohol um addictive substances like alcohol smoking gambling what social media does is administers that dopamine right that hit and the dopamine is what keeps you know us going back for more alcohol for having

another cigarette for going more you know doing more gambling and and what simon's saying is like it is as addictive but with all these substances they've all got age limits on gambling smoking you know you have a late age limit social media doesn't your smartphone doesn't so you've got this whole culture of these young people who are growing up addicted to social media platforms and to their smartphone and it's it doesn't seem to be curating a healthy mindset there is a rise of suicides there is a rise of mental disorders there is a rise of depression of uh issues with uh body image you know of of plastic surgery it seems it seems to have a very negative impact on people why what simon said and i completely agree with and i'm sure you do as well is that

substances like alcohol smoking gambling they're all okay moderation it's an excess it's when it becomes excessive that it becomes bad the odd drink here or there great drinking every day alcoholic lifestyle not great the odd trip to a casino for a random night out fine gambling every hour every day not okay you know like there has to be a limit on on these kind of of i was gonna say substances but it's not because gambling is not so on these kind of spheres that are addictive is the best way i can describe it but social media doesn't have that limit and it is very hard for us to put the limit on ourselves can you imagine an alcoholic living in the pub you know it's a fucking free-for-all how would they having an addiction to alcohol ever be

able to stop themselves going downstairs to the bar and having a drink whenever they want it's the same as it is a similar scenario to what we have here it's always at our fingertips and of course with the hit of dopamine the feel-good stuff there's always a negative there's always a come down there's always the bad and the low like yeah it's a balance right good bad yin yang you've always got the opposite end of the spectrum so anything that delivers that punch that high will also be able to bring you down as well and that is what we're trying to avoid basically but it's nigh on impossible when we can't really control well we can but we're not able to control how much we look at our phone we get addicted to that hit of comments likes

you know you're so pretty you're so pretty you're so beautiful oh my god i love your photo i love your photo oh my god i've got a hundred likes today oh my god i got a thousand likes today i'm popular i've got followers we get addicted to that yeah trust me i should know and really what is it all worth you know my instagram got hacked in oh my god when was it december october last year i think october last year yeah my instagram got hacked i had no instagram 10 years of content of building up my blog that and it was gone and i spent two months without it and i managed to find a way to get it back those two months were so weirdly liberating and thought-provoking because i then created an account as soon as i knew i wouldn't get i created

a new account i was having to go and find all the handles of people that i follow which i found difficult I didn't even know a lot of their their names off by heart like oh there's a really cool person that I follow but I've only followed them on the internet oh god what was their handle again and and like it kind of made me take a step back obviously I had no choice to and and kind of evaluate how meaningful is it because also it's just a software right it's just an app and they showed me they have the power to take it away like within an instant I just tried to log on money and gone and that's scary like i put my whole kind of basis of how my business and my brand in an app that could take it away from me without anything you know yeah so that aside

another issue with social media is how we get flooded with people's opinions and the media and internet articles that are may or may not be factually correct and everyone's sharing them and everyone's posting them and you know if there's a recent animal abuse case if there's a recent child abuse case i mean that gets written up by the media that goes on to facebook feed and you can't hide yourself from it you know if you've got all of your friends on there and they're sharing this stuff then you're kind of subjecting yourself to it and i'm not saying people shouldn't be sharing you know what they stand for or whatnot that's not it at all but it it's very overwhelming very overwhelming and I think the whole notion of just the sit in

and scrolling and stuff like even that's negative I think there's a lot of negative attachments to the use of social media i find a lot of the content that gets shared is negative to get clicks to get to the clickbait um that on facebook and i find a lot of the content created on instagram is really over the top positive to to the point it's completely fake to get likes and followers on instagram now there's two ends of the spectrum that are both bad like by all that negative media and all that horrendous stuff i'm having to see in my feed you're filling my day in my mind with awful shit and i used to do it a lot i used to share you know like oh god i don't i want people to change this is awful this is awful and then i realized that you know like i would affect a lot

of people by the stuff i shared and it stays with you you know if you're that way inclined so that's an issue you know that is causing someone negative response to things I'm sharing and then the Instagram positive stuff is causing problems because people are comparing themselves to a life that doesn't really exist and this is something else that I was speaking about with my girlfriend when she said I just want a break right these people have just got so many opinions on my life and like saying i'm always doing this or i'm always out and i'm like but yeah because instagram is a highlight reel of your life nobody posts photos well i'm sure that they do but most people don't post photos and say look i'm on a really fucking bad day um and i look like shit and i

feel like shit thanks listening it's all oh my god you've got to be positive you've got to be inspirational i'm inspiring people follow me because i'm so inspiring this is how what you should be doing every day this is what you should be doing every day no this is what you should be like constant so everyone's fucking comparing themselves to fake bullshit i'm sure all of these people who think they're really inspiring like get off their phone put it down and feel like shit because i can't imagine ever that it being that humanly possible to be that positive and happy every fucking day all day it's just not it's not real and that's the main issue with social media is it's filtered it's literally filtered it's so fake the photos are filters

your speech and bio captions are filtered you are carefully creating what you think will get you the most likes the most followers and everyone else is comparing themselves to everyone else's pages oh i could be better i could look better i should work out more i should eat less i should eat healthy i should be vegan i should go to protests i should care about matters more i should wear more fashionable clothes i could go on it's dangerous really fucking dangerous and if someone doesn't have a very strong sense of self and a very strong sense of self-esteem yeah can really get on top of you in fact it got on top of me not so long ago but why do we need a break what is it about social media where we can't just go oh god like whatever

why do we need a break why do we have to say oh I've got to remove the apps because we're all doing it to ourselves right no one is forcing us to go on apps every day nobody and some mornings I've catch myself waking up my alarm goes off my phone and then there I am thumbing through Facebook or Instagram checking out my latest comments messages or whatnot before I've even had a coffee you know i just lie in bed for an extra 20 minutes and that's the my other problem with social media is the time it consumes it consumes so much time just i think oh i could be so much more productive right now and i just wasted fucking an hour sitting going through bullshit and yet i still do it and yet we all still do it and that's why we always have to like

it is like trying to go cold turkey i've got to get it off my phone i've got to delete the apps you know i've got to disable the account when it gets like that it's fucking obvious social media is an addiction and we are all addicted whether we want to admit it or not we are addicted to seeing miserable stuff to seeing happy stuff we're addicted to try and finding inspiration and daily quotes that make us feel better we're addicted to reading you know all the negative news that people post we're addictive to voicing our opinions on stuff like everyone thinks they're an influencer now everyone thinks they're an influencer it is utterly mad honestly if it wasn't a part of my job i would probably come off as well and just so over it my partner's the same

so over it and it was something that was on my mind and then my girlfriend coincidentally messaged me and said that she was coming off for these reasons and i just thought yes it's an issue it's something that should be addressed we are all fucking addicted to social media it has been scientifically proven that the social media apps those comments those likes the followers that gives us that little high it gives us the same substance release the same lights up the same part of the brain that addictive substances also offer us and we can't run away from that or pretend that's not the case so on that note how do we uh how do we curb that addiction god knows i've been trying to give up cigarettes for years i still smoke when i drink

alcohol i want to give up alcohol i've been trying to give up alcohol for two months and every time uh every friday night i've been drinking you know it's it's not easy when you want to change but you are in control and you have easy access maybe we should all re-evaluate our relationship with social media i don't know i don't have the answer all i do know is the rise of suicides and young people the cyber bullying the rise of people having to take a break from social like it is curating a very bad mental mindset i believe oh and don't even get me started on this counseling culture cancelling people online what the fuck is that about like who has like the masses the social

media masses seem to have the power to cancel people out what the fuck and imagine being that person whatever you've done you get cancelled like so everyone's on edge about speaking out about having opinions in case they get cancelled it's insane it really is it's fucking dark it's bringing out the worst side of humanity do you know on tiktok there are now videos many many videos of pretty much animal abuse for laughs people doing challenges and getting their pets involved and trying to get the most shares and the most likes and animals are fucking suffering people's pets their family pets just to get a fucking like it's awful like what have we come man it's just oh god it gets me so down but of course the answer isn't oh i only share

positive stuff because then that becomes that fake creation as well you become the person that other people like think that's how they should live their life and compare themselves to you and find themselves wanting therefore causing negative thought process about themselves because you know they have a bigger waste because they have i don't know a less expensive fashion sense or they are the less followers i don't know what it is but people compare each other to people all the time on social and it's so dark like dangerous what makes us need to take the break why can't we just control our social media use why do we find ourselves going on social and looking at our ex partner's pages looking at our partner's exes pages looking at our partner's

future like new fling like or looking at our best friend's guy that she's seeing or looking at school friends that we didn't really even like like what a waste of time what a fucking waste of time and thinking of other people looking at my page freaks me out when i go into my instagram stories and i actually see who is looking at my stories it freaks me out there are people in there that i have no fucking clue why they're even on my page in the first place why they're looking and to be able to see that stuff it's just yeah like i said i could go on and on i think we should curb our digital media use

like there is a thing right in internet addiction disorder it's a thing and um we're probably all on the edge of yeah having that disorder all of us that's me included by the way i'm included in all of this taking a break is a very healthy option it just it depends though on how much you can command that space when you come back that you don't get overwhelmed like that again it depends how easy you can distance yourself from social media how easy you can make a few checks or post a photo and then get off and go about your day you know anyway something to think about monday night thoughts and thanks for listening and i'll see you all next week bye