Are You Using Your Device or is Your Device Using You?

This subject has been on my mind for months. I occasionally talk about it and express my feelings here and there; but this video really struck home with me. It’s no big secret, a big part of my life and my business is social media. I love social media for all the good it has to offer: sharing, connecting and inspiring. With that said, since a big part of my life and business is social media, it’s hard to put down the phone. I’ve changed my habits a lot within the past year and I feel SO good and yes, healthy!

When I’m not actually sharing or connecting, I’m not touching my phone. I don’t have mindless text conversations, I don’t scroll social media for hours (which I used to do) and I don’t pick up my phone unless I absolutely have to when I’m around people. When I’m with people, I want to actually be present. Social media has burried us into this world that may or may not be real - in fact, you don’t know what’s real or not. Did you know there is something called “Facebook Anxiety”? Im sure this was before Instagram and can easily be called Instagram Anxiety now. People are spending far too much time being consumed by the lives they’re seeing on social media, getting upset, hopeless and angry because they don’t think they have the life they “aspire” to have.

We’ve become obsessed and addicted to our devices and I truly believe is is unhealthy; I see it in my two year old daughter. She’s absolutely obsessed with the iPad/iPhone and she knows exactly how to use it and find the programs she needs - it’s scary! I do my best to control how much I let her use it and how often she’s on it. I’ve downloaded many educational games for her on the iPad and so when she is on it, at least she’s not watching things that are mindless. She LOVES YouTube and starts to watch all her favorite tv shows but then it moves on from there to random things and I can see her scrolling and scrolling; so I let her have it a certain amount of time then I take it away from her. Instead, I take her outside, or play toys with her in her room to distract her and show her I’m here to play and pay attention to her. It works every time, she’s happy!

So what do we do? Get rid of social media? Disconnect from the world? No. As mentioned in the video, it is all about balance! Balance and in my opinion, the content you chose to watch. Stop scrolling through the popular page for endless hours, follow people that inspire you or you connect with and let it uplift you, not bring you down! I can’t tell you how passionate I’m about this subject. I see too many people around me becoming consumed and start LIVING for social media and it’s sad and scary to see. Check out this short video below and let me know your thoughts. Much love, Lilit.