How Social Media Changed My Life

She is not texting me anymore. I haven’t received her text in a while. I am not feeling that energetic. It’s boring without smartphone. And bla-bla

If you are in this situation or you are being dragged into this un-intentionally then you need to stop everything and think about this. I won’t say that I am out of context or I haven’t experienced it but I will describe how I overcome this situation and made social media as one of my strongest skill.

It all started when I realized that I can’t live with my phone anymore. Leaving my phone for few hours would make me cranky. I decided to find out why this is happening to me? What’s happening was I am not interacting with the outer world any more. I was confined to the small world of me and my smartphone.

After analyzing the situation, I found that I am too much addicted to social media apps like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram that I was hardly talking to anyone even with my roommate. So, I decided to give myself a test and decided to leave all social media for one week and analyse the difference. I restricted internet access for all my social media apps. I thought that this would be great idea and I could focus on my studies but I was shocked that leaving my phone for 30 minutes was a disaster for me. I was checking my phone every 5 minutes for new notifications but as I restricted internet usage, it blocked every time. I was broken from inside that I could not leave social media for at-most 30 minutes only!

I was really frustrated with myself and got in a bad conversation with my roommate (I never told him the reason but now he will get to know the why part). After relaxing myself for 4-5 hr, I eventually slept and woke up late in the morning. But I totally gave up on myself and decided I can’t do this anymore. So, I was forced myself to come back and when I activated internet, around 2000 notifications popped up! I was bound stuck. I was literally feeling that just throw the phone and sleep again. That’s what I did! (I threw phone on table). In the afternoon, when I came back from college and activated internet, around 300 notifications popped up. At this stage, I decided to resolve this issue. So, I went through each and every notification carefully and found a way to tackle my problem. One of the obvious ways was to uninstall all of these and keep the important one.

Most of the people think this way and I was also thinking the same way but before doing this, I was randomly watching some YouTube videos and I suddenly a video popped (title and channel I don’t remember) but it changed the way I think. Basically, the girl was talking about how social media changed her life. Being curious I watched the whole video and I realized that I can turn my social media addiction into my goodwill. I removed unnecessary things from these platforms and tried to explore the good side of it.

One of the best things that happened to me was I joined a community called Digit Squad which is an online community where people like me are mad about technology and want to share their thoughts on every new launch and want other people opinions. The shocking part is that I got to know about this community through FACEBOOK! At this time, my faith in social media restored. I gave the entrance test and luckily, I got selected. I would talk in the community the whole day and I was pretty happy with my decision. Then there were some people discussing about blogging and stuff. To be honest, I heard this terminology many times but didn’t know the meaning. I asked them to explain all about it. I got a pretty good response from them and on 20th Feb 2019 I published my first blog.

The first blog was full of mistakes and I took all feedback in a very positive manner. Second article was released and this time it was a hit. I got so many good wishes for future articles. And the journey continued until I realised that my interest is loosing as I was not getting a good response in terms of views. Then one of my friends asked me, “oye aab tu article ni likh rha kya hogya?” I don’t know that the sender know that this message gave me a little hope that people really read my articles and they want me to write. I was pumped up and wrote another article within 2 hour and uploaded it at the same time. That’s how I started blogging and now I am pretty good at it. The biggest achievement was that I was invited for SoDelhi Blogger conference which gathers 2000+ bloggers from all over India. It is covered by whole media.

Another thing I want to share is that being part of Digit community gave me opportunities to explore new gadgets and that happened at Digit Squad Tech Day (click here to read my experience).

There are so many things that I explored using social media and some big surprises are also coming so stay tuned for that 😊. I want to just thank each and everyone who supported my decisions and listened to my shit when I was too low. I want to give some tips and advice to my readers on how to use social media a better way: (I am not an expert but its based on what I have learnt)

1. Follow right people: It may sound harsh but try to avoid people which you think are wasting your time. Now I am not saying that just cut-off conversations with them or totally boycott them. All I am saying is that if you have a feeling that this guy/girl is wasting my time then try not to waste much time with them.

2. Follow right pages: You all will agree to this that Instagram has lot of adult content meme pages which we all enjoy (Eventually I enjoyed them too but now I have unfollowed them) but It changes the way you think about a problem and changes our perspective towards life. It may sound disturbing to you but it’s a fact. So, you should follow pages that actually give you knowledge about your field. Again, I am not saying to ignore them but spend the least amount of time on these things.

3. Be active about surrounding evens: Whenever I go to any event, my friends always ask,” How you get to know about these events?” my simple answer is social media. What you search on internet, what are your interest are key basis of recommendation system of any social media platform. If you are liking technology related post, if you are highly interested on fashion trends then platform like Facebook will give you suggestions about nearby events.

At the end you are the master of your life – a famous quote

I want to amend this and say:

You are master of your social media and not someone else- yeh apun ka original hai 😊 😊

Thanks everyone! 😊