How Social Media Steal Your Life and How to Avoid It

Tips you need to know to avoid the unwanted influence.

Bing! You’ve got a message. Bing! You have a new notification. How many such sounds do you get per day? Per week? Per month?

I bet that your first reaction is to open your social media app and check your notifications. I’m also like you, and I understand why we’re doing this again and again.

Did you ever wonder how this affects you? Why do you need to check all your notifications immediately?

Social media influences your decisions. To buy a new T-Shirt, you feel a need to check what is trending now. To cook something, you want to find the most popular recipe.

Perfectionism to Make You Better

Marketers know a lot of secrets to make you buy more. Perfectionism is one of them.

Take a look at any social media picture with an ad. Turn on the TV, and you see terrific videos. They’re almost like Hollywood movies.

If you go deeper, you quickly find that there are many ads with before and after results. For example, women before and after make-up. Why is this trick wildly popular?

Before and after has enormous visual power, you can compare the results visually is just one second that what marketers want you to do. They want to make you think visually.

Perfectionism is a primary marketer weapon. They make you feel as if you have a problem with your skin or body and provide solutions immediately. This solution will be a product or service you must buy. Not should, but must.

Why it works

People receive 90% of the information visually, according to Research at 3M Corporation. That means marketers have a few seconds to make a wow effect. That is the main reason why before and after ads work the best.

How to protect yourself from the influence

Before you agree with what marketers tell you to buy, ask yourself, do you need it? There are situations when you need some products or services, but this is 1–2% of all the ads you see.

Think wise, and be honest with yourself. You’re the only one who knows what you need. Don’t make your social media a place for shopping.

Superstar Effect

You follow a lot of stars, influencers, and check their posts, tweets every day. You want to hear hot news or amazing stories. That’s great. You want to be inspired and start or finish your day productively.

Once you realize star life is something you dream about, you decide to become one.

Daily photoshopping is your usual routine from now. There isn’t much to say about you. That’s why you start to make shots everywhere you can. This irritating hobby affects your partner, family, and even your pets.

As a next step, you want to change yourself and look like a star. So you try to change the way of talking, your style, etc. You’re trying to be successful.

Maybe you even want to go further and start to copy some stars. Let’s say you want to be as Lady Gaga or Billie Eilish. It means you will try to look similar or even do a surgery (very crazy thing).

Why the superstar effect is so powerful

Superstars are people who already proved that they are successful. You believe if you go the same way, you get the same results. If they could do it, then you will do it as well.

Why it won`t work for you

Trying to become a star, especially copying someone, won’t work because you aren’t this star. Every human is unique. Why should someone follow you if they have the original brand?

How to protect yourself

It will help if you remember that a superstar is also a human. He or she went a long way before success. It’s a job to be a superstar, not a hobby. You go to the office. They go to the stage. That is the only difference. Stop think about stars as about something supernatural.

Identity Loss

When you scroll your feed, you frequently stop on the most popular posts. You want to check it and understand why it’s so popular. What is so interesting is there.

It’s not bad. But it becomes bad once you prefer to follow the popularity rule only.

You might see such an influence in your everyday life. For example, you want to buy a dress. You start searching for it. Most of the shop apps have filters called popular. If you apply this tag, it means you go over other people’s preferences, but not yours.

Sometimes it’s good to be updated with the latest trends, but it’s the influence only in most cases.

As a result of this impact, you lose your personal interests and go for mass ones.

Marketers widely use popularity influence. Once they say that X thing is popular and trendy, they start to dictate the rules.

Losing your identity is really something to worry about. Each human is unique, so that we might follow something interesting to us only.

Why it works

You feel unconfident in your personal solutions. You prefer to go over masses rather than your own voice. If so many people prefer X solution, then they have experience. But you don’t. This is a typical logic behind the mass effect.

How to protect yourself

Whether other people’s experience is important, it’s good to ask yourself too. For example, you want to buy a T-Shirt. Only you know what interests you and what’s not. If there is an unpopular T-Shirt, but you like it, buy it. You’re the main in your personal decisions. Not other people.

You Lose Your Time

It’s good to relax after work and watch cute pets or read inspirational quotes. It’s good to shop online and buy what you need. But there is a time when you spend too much on your favorite apps.

A full-time job takes at least 8 hours per day. Human sleeps 6 hours per day. You cook or take care of yourself at least 1 hour per day. Transportation might take up to 2–3 hours per day.

These quick calculations explain that you have 6–7 hours for your free time. Surprisingly, you might have 0 free hours per day because of social media.

If you use social media to relax a bit, let’s say 1 hour, and start to do other tasks, it’s good.

But you start to watch your favorite videos, play games, watch movies or shows. You want more and more content.

That’s the stress point. Gamers are the ones who feel this impact every day. It seems social media are new addiction for people of 21 century. You start to play games or watch movies and can’t stop. Something is holding you. You even become anxious if someone interrupts you.

Why it works

There are so many different contents. It was created for you so you can absorb it. But it is not possible to absorb all. Mentally you feel happy with new content. You feel relaxed. Your brain wants to continue this and doesn’t allow you to stop.

How to protect yourself

Try to realize that social media is only your virtual space. It’s good to relax and free your mind or get inspired. But you have your life, your duties. Real-life is a true value. But social media isn’t real value. They’re just helpers who boost your real life.

Wrong Information

If you use social media to get the latest news, was you ever wondered are they truthful? You read so many tweets, posts, and articles I bet some are provocative or provide no real information.

As a reader, you worry about sources you get information from. It’s important because you imagine the world picture from everyday use. It might be any topic of your life.

Why is it important to know that you’re reading the spam or fake news? If you want to check the latest updates about your favorite star and read about his or her death. How do you feel? I suppose you feel upset.

Another example. You want to check the political situation in your country. But the information you read was wrong. This means you were cheated or misinformed.

Wrong information can collapse any aspect of your life. It impacts your emotions, budget, health. It impacts the whole levels of people community, starting from the smallest to the highest.

Wrong information brings the wrong solutions. Wrong solutions bring negative results only.

Why it works

You’re interested in feeling emotions with the information you get. Most of the spam or fake news is based on emotions. This might be fear, anxiety, anger, happiness, surprise, etc. It’s easy to catch your attention with clickbait titles that you are already interested in reading about.

How to protect yourself

Read and watch the information from trusted channels only. Once you read a provocative article, check other sources, and compare what you’ve just read. If it’s spam, you’ll quickly find it out.

Final Thoughts

Social media are important aspects of your life. You get inspired, relaxed, or happy watching or reading content. But you aware it is not the only place for your relaxation and information. There are dangerous aspects of influence that might impact you.

I provided the most common examples of social media influence on your life. If you know all of them, you can easily manage both your real and virtual lives.