Tatiana Kukanova was a girl who spent more time on social media than anything else and it was often a bone of contention between our group of friends. You can only imagine how shocked we were then when Tatiana decided to have a break from all social media channels last year, a break which actually turned out to be a complete shutdown of all of her accounts on Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Tatiana not only made this decision, but she really stuck to it and it has actually inspired a few of the others to give up our own social media accounts. Here is why Tatiana felt that it was time to put a stop to the social media madness.
Disconnected
The reason why I mentioned that it was a bone of contention for us that Tatiana was always on social media was because she was just always disconnected from us. We would be out enjoying a nice meal, or a coffee and she would be sat there on her phone the whole time, snapping shots of her food and our friends. What actually happened was that Tatiana was uploading photos of her friends like she was having the time of her life, when in actual fact she wasn’t really with us in an emotional sense.
Worried
Tatiana has always been a very opinionated individual and she would enjoy looking into world affairs. What happened however was that this passion for world affairs manifested itself into something of an obsession with what was going on in the world and she would spend hours on Twitter talking with people about these issues. What Tatiana failed to realize until after she had taken a break from social media was that she was getting involved in things and worrying about things in the world that she couldn’t affect in the slightest. A brief chat about the war in Yemen and how sad it is would be one thing, but spending hours looking into the details, causes and impacts, and genuinely worrying about it is quite another. Since quitting social media Tatiana has managed to focus her time and energy on the things in life which she can actually change.
Mental Health
Mental health issues are very much exacerbated by social media use and only people who have positive mental health should be using it to any great extent. The reason for this is that social media can be very nasty indeed and people seem to relish posting negative information and troll comments simply for the sake of it. Tatiana actually hadn’t considered any o this when she was using social media but since leaving, she has realized that her mental health has greatly improved. She no longer needs to hold herself up to a particular standard, so she feels less pressure, nor does she have to read awful words with people have written with no other intention than to hurt.
Tatiana is infinitely happier now without social media, would you be if you gave it up?
