Opting out of social media!

I am awed by the discipline of one of my colleagues who doesn’t have a cell phone. As a university professor, he can certainly afford the cost of acquiring and maintaining a cell phone. This fellow is relatively young – under 30 years of age, with a fiancée. His reason for abstention is quite simple: […]

I am awed by the discipline of one of my colleagues who doesn’t have a cell phone. As a university professor, he can certainly afford the cost of acquiring and maintaining a cell phone. This fellow is relatively young – under 30 years of age, with a fiancée. His reason for abstention is quite simple: “I don’t need it!”
As the head of my department, I sometimes perceived the need to reach this professor outside of office hours or sometimes when he stepped out of the office. Not being able to reach him at these times, over time, I have been forced to also discipline myself to now wait till he returns to the office or till the next day, as the case may be. I am pleased to tell you that the heavens have not fallen yet, and both of us seem to be doing fine after all, thank you!
Last week Thursday, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal written by Christine Rosen entitled “Teens Who Say No to Social Media.” These are teenagers, between 13 and 17 years of age, who are “opting out of the relentless pursuit of ‘likes’ on Facebook and Instagram” Moreover, these kids are actually tech savvy. According to 2015 statistics, a typical American teen has 145 Facebook friends and 150 Instagram followers.
Doesn’t abstention reflect awkwardness and antisocial behavior? Aren’t these kids missing out or left out? Perhaps not!  A parent of an abstaining teen notes that “Social media is just gossip, a lot of it;” concluding that her daughter is better off without it.
Teens and young adults who abstain from social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. – have tons of reasons for doing so: it looks exhausting, it takes too much time and gets kids too absorbed, or they would rather spend their time in the real, physical world than on the phone. Yet others feel that face-to-face interaction trumps the “filtered intimacy of Facebook and Instagram.” On missing out, Rosen quotes a teenager who says “he can’t recall a time when something important happened in his social circle and he didn’t hear about it.” “They let me know if something is going on,” he said.
I believe this kid. There is a joke I always crack with my family members regarding my decision to sometimes go without TV for weeks: If a news item affects me, trust me, I’ll get to know about it somehow. And in truth, this has always been the case. So, though I say it’s a joke, it really isn’t!
Another teenager is quoted by Rosen as saying “Sometimes I wouldn’t understand a specific joke everyone was telling, but 90% of the time, it’s not really worth it-it’s just a joke.” As you probably know, time is the only thing in life that, if you lose, you can never regain.
One of the most insidious aspects of social media is what Rosen describes as the unhealthy tendency of teens to constantly compare themselves to their peers and celebrities “whose exploits are relentlessly documented across social media.” “Everyone has their Facebook-perfect, happy life. But you have to figure out your own self. Social media doesn’t encourage people to do that.” The power of peer-pressure cannot be overstated: Anything that receives more “likes” from peers is more likely to be liked by an adolescent – without a critical independent assessment. Pretty sad!
I wish adolescents are more goal-oriented: spending their time on useful things that have significant implications for their lives – such as studying hard, reading useful books, learning computer programming so they can develop the likes of Facebook or something better. And so on.
Abstention is not new to my own family. Even though my early years in the US were spent in Upstate New York as a student, and my kids were born there, I moved to the Midwest of the US to work after graduation. Then I changed job to pursue an academic career – guess where? Back in New York; but this time in the metropolis. To cut the story short, my wife and I decided to shut down the TV in our family for a period of 4 years so our kids could focus on their studies in Middle School and Junior High. The growth that the kids achieved during that period is beyond description, and I believe that the phenomenal success that they have achieved today was significantly helped by the events of those TV-free years. Today, my children hardly watch TV, even though they are now adults; opting instead to invest in themselves at the slightest opportunities.
Of course, parental measures do not need to be as drastic as it was in my family; but parents do have a responsibility to properly guide their younger ones regarding the Internet. Teens and young adults do need to have adequate boundaries.