I’ve learned in my experiences of social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat that the way in which we define certain words matter. When I say that we “define words”, I don’t mean defining words by researching the Oxford definition. I mean that we, as a society, collectively agree to certain societal norms and standards that are directly reflected in our social media feeds. These definitions seep into our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of what society expects from us. As an example, when I was in high school, I had a sense of being different from others because I was forced to grow up fast. Facing food instability and homelessness, there were seemingly “small” images, videos, and advertisements in social media that I would see that would remind me over and over that I was different. I would see people going to proms, football games, and parties, while I was working late hours to support myself financially. I would see these images repeatedly to the point that I began to mentally differentiate myself from others based on their social media presence, rather than who they were as people. Rather than speaking with my peers about who they are and where they came from, I closed myself off from the conversation, assuming I knew them because everyone tells the truth on social media, right? The presence of social media while I was in high school very much heightened my sense of being an “outcast”. I truly believe that if these platforms were written with humanity in mind, social media could have been a beautiful place for me to get the social support that I needed. I needed to be reminded that I was loved, looked out for, and seen, rather than different, invisible, and alone. Now that I am out of high school, I do set clear boundaries with social media because I know how it impacts me. I delete the apps during the holidays, because it provides a false sense of everyone living out of a Christmas movie. I use the screen time feature that Apple provides and limit myself. Now that I set clear boundaries with my relationship with social media, I can define what a “home” means. I can define what my sense of “normalcy” is. Removing myself from the societal expectations and standards that social media suffocates me with allows for me to see the world for what it is: a beautiful place filled with people who have their own experiences that I can learn from, rather than a place where everyone is “living their best life” without struggle. Normalize adversity and authenticity in social media, rather than forcing us to pretend that our struggles do not exist. Thank you for listening.

I started my freshman year of high school in 2011. By then most of my peers already Facebook accounts and I was feeling left out from all the fun they seemed to be having online. I had begged my parents to let me open an account, and after a discussion about internet safety, I was finally allowed to have one. It ruined my life in less than a month.I rarely used my account to scroll through the news feed. I didn't add many friends at first, and only added people I knew at school and some family members. I thought I was using the service responsibly. But before long I found myself replacing in-person interaction with the private messaging system. I only remember hanging out with my friends at birthday parties and after school programs. I would finish my homework and get online, staying up past 2 am every night to chat with my friends and waking up at 6 am to get to school by 7:35. I quickly lost sleep, stopped exercising (even though I've always been involved in sports), and my health (both physical and mental) suffered for it. What I didn't realize at the time was that my online interactions perpetrated a toxic relationship with the guy I had a crush on at the time. He knew about it and he manipulated me by using my feelings for him as a weapon. I was so desperate for his attention that I would have done anything for it, and using social media exclusively meant I didn't have any other, healthy friendships to compare. He opened up to me about his mental health issues so I made up my own to fit in and try to relate to him. I told him I was so depressed that I started to believe it. It was the most insidious form of cyberbullying I've ever seen. I didn't realize how much I was hurting and I thought I deserved it because I was so desperate. I withdrew from my family, from all my other friends. I started self-harming and received validation for it. I hurt myself more. I lost more sleep. I exercised less. I withdrew more.Eventually it got so bad my parents installed controls on my computer that logged me off after 10 pm. I resented them for it at the time but it was the best thing they ever did for me. It saved me. I ended the toxic friendship. I found new friends. My health came back and I grew more connected with my family. Over the years I used my Facebook account less and less, until eventually the only reason I still maintained the account was because a few of my project teams in college used the messenger service to collaborate (and exchange memes).The harm it did was real and it still hurts. I still regret the friendships I withdrew from and how it hurt my family. I'm 23 now and finally deleted my Facebook account two months ago. I don't miss it at all.

I have never had a healthy relationship with social media from the start. However, I only became aware of our toxic relationship years later. But ironically, the moment I realized social media is harmful to me was not the moment I cut it out of my life. Toxic relationships, as toxic as they are, are comforting and addicting. Just like toxic relationships between people, it is not easy to get rid of a relationship with social media because it feels like you're getting rid of a relationship with yourself. We build social media accounts as if we are building our identity. I started in middle school and it all started as a harmless interest of seeing what my friends were doing and receiving positive comments that made me feel happy and accepted. I started planning my life around my Instagram posts. I was already thinking about what kind of picture I wanted to take, who to take it with, and what caption I would tag along with the post even before the event actually happened. The hour after I posted a picture was the most thrilling moment as I excitedly waited for the notifications of likes and comments. I felt happily obliged to reply to all the comments, thinking that not replying would make people think that I was a mean person. But, I was not. My Instagram profile was crafted to make you think that I had a lot of friends. I got along with all of them and I was popular. I had a few hundred followers and always more than a hundred likes. I knew that Instagram was not good for me when I started feeling terrible after I could not let go of my phone after an hour of using the app. I felt like I was addicted, and I knew that I was. And so, I created challenges for myself. I did an Instagram fast for 1 week. 1 week went to 1 month. During those weeks or months I did not use Instagram, I felt victorious and triumphant, like I had finally regained control over the app instead of letting the app continue its reign over me. However, every time I went back to the app, it felt like I was sucked back into a black hole. Negative feelings continued to pile up onto each other: I felt uncomfortable seeing other people look popular and enjoying their life more than I did. I would have rather not known that my friends were hanging out without me. I had no interest whatsoever on what this person was eating for lunch. What really is the point of this app now? The one purpose I held onto was connection. I wanted to connect with my friends living in another country as well as connect with my past: my precious old pictures and comments. This seemed like a good enough reason to keep my account. Then, this one incident that made me confront myself with this question: Now, do you really want to keep this app? It was out of the blue when my private account received messages from unknown accounts. Those messages opened my eyes up to the horrifying dark world of social media as the sexual harassment lasted for several months. Luckily I knew what to do: I took screenshots and reported the accounts. However, the harassment continued and the app I had known for so long and had grown reliant to, was not helping me at all in this time of desperation- just like a toxic partner. Instagram was completely useless in keeping sexual harassment messages from coming my way. I felt sick, horrified, disgusted, and terrified. I took things in my own hand and changed my username multiple times to be found again by the same group of anonymous attackers who knew my name. Instagram's algorithm and the fact that these people could find my account which was private and did not have a biography, was extremely shocking. Reporting it to my local police station did not solve my problem. There was nothing they could do to handle these foreign anonymous attackers as Instagram denied giving access to my local police on the attackers. I was left to handle this on my own, but what could I do? I could choose not to have this account anymore. Then, I would not receive such messages. However, even after I had gone through those traumatic experiences, it was difficult to automatically delete my account. Perhaps it was because of all the effort I put into building my profile and all the memories I had stored in my memory book. This was my ugly truth. My social truth. It took time, weeks, actually, of not using the app and putting my ultimate health and happiness first to finally reach to the conclusion of deleting my account. I made this decision because ultimately, the benefits Instagram gave me became completely overshadowed by the pain, damages, and fear it had caused. The purpose of my account was for connection, and I realized that the "connections" I had on Instagram were not genuine at all. Deleting my account was a lot easier than I thought, and I felt like I had finally regained control over this large part of my life. At the end, I bravely chose my wellbeing. (I'm happy to be contacted to share more about my experiences.)

Me and my peers in 7th grade have been addicted to technology for a while and we weren't aware of our situation until our class study of technology's risks. And it wasn't until now that we realized how exposed to addiction we are. We all think this is a real issue that we need to be aware of. Most of the issues that we have had in our class have been about technology and most of our conversations have been about technology. Then we saw "The Social Dilemma" and most of our conversations about technology have stopped. Some of our classmates have not recognized their dependence on technology and social media and it has an affect on our whole class culture. Our hopes for our future are to try to get away from technology and to stop our addictions on technology.-Kenneth, Josan, Mario, Ashley (7th graders , St. Rose Of Lima Catholic Academy , Denver, Colorado )

Posting IG stories made me care a lot more about my online image, i legit wanted to prove to my followers that i had a life too but all that did was tear me down and make me compare myself with others even more. I'm 5 months clean from social media and not once do i regret deleting my soc meds. Best decision I've ever made.

When I was younger, in middle school, I made a conscious effort not to be on social media because I knew the effects it could have. Eventually though, I started to feel left behind, not only by my friends who were online, but I kept being told I needed to be on it if I wanted to get published as an author in the future. As I got older I realized this was no longer an individual choice I was allowed to make. It was how the world worked, and I would have to conform in order to get my work to a larger audience. The final straw was realizing I was already stuck in scrolling cycles, if it wasn't on social media yet it was on a news app or Buzzfeed, whatever I could find. when I finally caved I experienced the negative aspects first-hand. The cake recipes sandwiched in between crash diets and messages to love yourself were disorienting. Every time I saw a message that made me feel good I was two swipes away from one that wouldn't. I especially started to become invested in activism and politics, but social media adds a new layer of pressure. You must always be aware of the tragedies going on in the world and if you don't repost them then you clearly don't care. You can never be 'woke' enough, you're always saying something wrong, and you see the backlash from it, even from friends. I've noticed people are a lot more radical online, several of my friends have posted "If you support (insert political candidate) I will not associate with you." It's disappointing to see them not only make rash assumptions about other's beliefs in that way but to be openly propagating it. How can they ensure their assumptions are founded in reality if they aren't associating with these people? My friends don't mean this I'm sure, but that is the precise problem with the polarizing effects of social media. It would be best for me to remove social media altogether, but as I mentioned, it's necessary for networking, so I must learn to use social media more healthily. I only use Instagram and YouTube as opposed to other apps, which helps. I've written a research argumentative paper on the role of social media in polarization and radicalization, and am looking forward to working with the company LOG OFF in the future. In the paper, I argued for a governmental committee on the advancement of technology and the revision of Section 230, which is largely responsible for the way social media works today. There are, of course, fixes we can all make around screen time and who we follow, but young people will continue to get trapped in this hole we have to dig ourselves out of unless the laws start to change. The algorithms must change, otherwise, the problems we face now will only incur for the next generation.

Social Media, in my personaal opinion was just to gain attention from others when I was younger because I was the unpoular kid once. But as the years progressed, there were so much drama, so much depression coming from that. It's like this was a trap built for me to become even more sad than before.

When I was a freshman, four students at my high school died by suicide. Numb and confused, my 15-year-old brain could not begin to grasp the depth of the tragedies. As a result, I became more sensitive to the young people around me who were also struggling. I lost sleep over my friend, Katie, whose battle with mental health heartlessly robbed her of the contagious laugh I loved so much. I cried with my little sister when she was viciously attacked by an online group full of hate. I watched anxiety envelop my cousin until she could no longer eat. And I certainly was not exempt; friendless and alone, I often felt invisible. It became clear that my generation is barely existing in a war against our own mental health. I really appreciate everything CHT is doing to promote positive uses of technology, especially since social media is often a cause for mental health issues and teen suicide, yet it is usually the first place young people seek when they are hurting. CHT and Girl Scouts inspired me to create a positive virtual community where young people can anonymously post their personal stories, struggles, and heartfelt questions without the fear of judgement or rejection. It is a safe and positive place that welcomes all. Please share asafeplace2share.org with anyone who might benefit from our uplifting community. Together, we will fight relentlessly to ensure that no one in our community becomes a casualty of this merciless war.

When I turned 12 i got my first phone, with that came social media, Instagram, Snapchat, and at that time Musical.ly. I loved being a part of the group that had a phone and even better social media but now 5 years later I feel myself having a problem, the first thing I do in the morning is reach for my phone, I’m always on it during school, it's the first thing I look at when I get home. It’s even caused some people to be pretty rude, my freshman year (I’m a junior now) I was very confused with my sexuality so I did some wandering around, seeing what I liked and didn’t like, girls at my school did enjoy that very much. I had a secret girlfriend who ended up telling her friends about it and they really didn’t like that, they called me “d*ke”, “f*g”, ''lesbo ``,''freak `` things like that and I spiraled, I thought there was something wrong with me, i thought I was messed up and it let me into a deep and dark depression but, I got up, and got over it. I’m now comfortable with my sexuality and myself. I’m working on myself and that's the most important thing.

When I think of social media, the first thing that comes to my head is how it lowers the quality of my in-person interactions with friends and family. Countless times this has happened where me and my friends go out to eat which requires carving out time from our busy routines to see each other. However, when we are actually standing in front of each other physically, no one is actually mentally there in the moment trying to enjoy the rare face to face encounter with the people we love. Instead, we're mentally consumed by something that could literally be done at any other time of the day -- scrolling through snapchat or Instagram stories. This doesn't make sense -- we made the plans to hang out and enjoy each other's company, so why are we using social media? Clearly, social media is designed in a way to make us crave it, need it, and unconsciously turn to it in moments where it wouldn't make sense to do so. Granted, this is something that I struggle with as well, which is extremely troubling since I think about this problem a lot -- imagine the people who are manipulated by this but don't notice the problem. Yet, way too often I find the unconscious part of my brain instinctively clicking on snapchat and just wasting away time. Our technology and social media can NOT be designed to manipulate and warp our unconscious behavior and decisions. This is seen first and foremost when even intentions to be present and enjoy the in person company of one another are defeated by the addictiveness of these platforms. I've found that only solution is to make it impossible for oneself to check social media -- shutting off phone, leaving phone at home, etc.Instead, the platforms should be designed with the intent of enriching our in-person lives, not warping our subconscious to crave acceptance and likes on the virtual platforms. At the very least, I think there should be a feature that detects how long you've been on the app, and forcing you to get off the app after an extended period of time. Personally, I have a snapchat addiction, and even though I feel unproductive and left out scrolling through snapchat stories and seeing what other people are doing (which I subconsciously look at when I have downtime). Yet, I can't just delete the app as a whole, since I communicate with my friends on the app, which I actually gain a lot of value from. I think there should be an option to opt out of the snapchat stories page, since that is not my intention to use that feature on the app. Yet, for me it has grasped the unconscious part of my brain and I find myself wasting time there.This deeply saddens me to be the generation this platform is tested on. While social media fuels our egos with likes and superficial attention, people are miserable standing in front of one another. I often times wonder what it would've been like to live 10 years ago. I wonder if I would be able to deepen my bonds with my friends and family, the people I love most, which is ultimately what really matters to in life -- not likes on social media. Through my experience, It's upsetting to feel the negative effects of social media. It's flat out immoral to create a product that warps our subconscious minds, which directly affects the connections we make with people in real life.

Last year I experienced feelings of depression and even gained an eating disorder because of apps such as Tiktok and Instagram. I would see people online who were older than me posting about the best/most unique parts of their life and theirselves. By seeing these I was convinced I was not good enough. Tiktok had started recommending weight loss videos and “what I eat in a day” videos to my “For You” page. These videos promoted the comparing going on in my mind by only filling me with thoughts about how I could alter myself to be “better.” I ended up isolating myself and was on the verge of going to the hospital. To this day I still have a bad relationship with food but I have now realized the horrible impact social media had on me. When I now try to have conversations with my friends they want to go on their phones. This has caused a great problem in which my friends no longer know how to converse “IRL”. Hopefully by speaking up about these problems there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. For now I appreciate all the work everyone is doing to change the negative side to social media.

I was happy. I was active, ballet, soccer, volleyball musical, number one in my class, lots of friends. My life was not perfect but I learned to manage it and to be positive. Then came freshman year of high school. Did he text me? How many people liked my post? Do I like how my body looks in pictures? Unfortunately, the answer was no. I found a community in social media to "help" me but it made everything worse. 14 years old and I had already gone three days without eating, addicted to instagram to see all these girls with perfect bodies. It felt like a downward spiral I could not get out of. But I did. It was a long process that I have not recovered completely of yet but I did it. Next, COVID hit and in quarantine my use of social media escalated exponentially. I stopped talking to my family, to my friends, and doing any exercise. Average of 6 to 7 hours on TikTok, wasting my life, my time, my life at 16 meant nothing. I got to a really dark place where I thought about self harm. I was not pretty enough, skinny enough, funny enough. No one would want me. Lie. Lie. Lie. After lie. Social media is full of lies, nothing you see is real but we are convinced that their lives are perfect whilst mine is awful. No it's not. Believe me. I'mm 17 now, escaping from that rabbit, dark hole. I feel so much better now, with a purpose. Do not get me wrong, I have no idea what I am going to do with my life once I graduate, but everything seems clearer now. It all started with a long break from social media.

So I have two experiences to share that both occured on instagram. I follow a lot of feminist and activist accounts. While I just wanted to support marginalised communities I have been vilified in the comments because people misunderstood me. One time I was accused of being homophobic even though I wanted to do the opposite with my comment and uplift the lgbtq+-community. I don't like being vilified for something I never said but I also know that sometimes it isn't worth it to fight with strangers about your moral opinions. The second experience I want to share is that because of post anxiety I can't post something on there except stories. I get so invested in how many likes I get that I just stopped posting except instagram stories. My anxiety is spiking when I sit there and wait on people to like my stuff. I've also come to an agreement with myself that I don't want to lie about my personal life so I'll never post anything personal because I don't wanna seem egocentric. I just made it my goal to uplift marginalised communities and voices. That's how I made peace with the craziness of social media.

I'm a child caretaker currently working for a family in Connecticut.Generally I work with younger kids, but recently I joined a family with teenagers. I won't describe any further details for the sake of their privacy.What I've noticed is that TikTok has become a life-consuming obsession among young kids. Kids that aren't even in their teenage years yet, are glued to their phone screens 24/7. Some kids have admitted that they are addicted, they spend 14+ hours on social media in a day. Yet, when asked what's interesting about TikTok, they struggle to formulate an answer.It's impossible to have even a 5min conversation with them without them losing their focus and continuing their endless scroll. How does this impact their attention span? How does it impact their ability to have human conversations? I don't think we can even comprehend the full extent of damage that is being inflicted on their minds by allowing them to be so consumed by these online realms.Another growing concern is how fake news is impacting the younger generations. These stories are being forced on them through social media, misguiding their entire perception of the world they live in.All young children are naive by nature and will believe nearly anything they're exposed to without the consideration of getting a better idea of the bigger picture at hand.I think it's amazing how readily available such a broad scope of information has become through these online portals, but it's important that the information we receive is received with intentionality. We're all forcedly exposed to a one-sided perception of national and global activity due to targeted news and ads.We're robbed of the chance to know the TRUE FACTS of both sides of an argument, because we are limited to what the online portals think we should know instead of what we actually should know. I'm terribly afraid of how this addiction to technology and social media is impacting the younger generations. Not just today, but when these kids have grown to become the leaders of the world.I think that anyone with access to the internet and any social media channels should be well educated about what happens to the data that is taken from our interactions with the web. Why are the Big Tech companies so reluctant to share with us exactly what they use our data for? And more importantly, what data are they actually scraping from our interactions with their sites?If these companies are going to monopolize industries the way they have, and gain such value, we need to be much more aware of how we are really contributing to their scale and value. And why exactly their overtaking of these industries are causing a drastic increase in inequality.

3 weeks before watch the Netflix film, I had deleted my Instagram account because Something just hit me and I’ve been quite unhappy for a real long time the more I spend my time on the app. After watching the movie, I have gotten a clear picture of what’s actually going on and I felt rather relieved and paranoid at the same time. I used to be very careful on what I share on my social media accounts but now I’m not so sure anymore because it isn’t the people that I fear but the application itself that makes me do things I’m consciously unaware of. I have reduced my usage of Twitter and Snapchat. Most of my friends think I’m just being paranoid or plain stupid but I know my priorities now. I have learned how to manage my time and I feel free. I’m not obliged to post anything or have the need to even share a picture of what I ate. I don’t care what people do with their lives because in the end of the day I have to take care of my mental health and stability. I wouldn’t say I have completely deleted my social media accounts, but I have learned to use them wisely as a tool instead. And I have to thank the film for this.

I got addicted to youtube when I was in high school because I had no friends and got bullied from time to time, at the time I didn't realize it was to cope, but I did know I was lonely and had no friends. Because YouTubers have such a personal relationship with their audience, you feel very close to them and their content, not realizing they aren't telling you everything about their life. I was a fan of Shane Dawson, and he is the poster child for this. He was manipulating his audience and using the algorithm to his advantage during his career. I remember feeling close to him and him always thanking his audience and hyping them up, which made me feel very seen, even though I wasn't. A few years after I got sucked into online activism/SJW corners of the internet on Facebook and Instagram and for a long time I believed I wasn't being biased/subjective when I very clearly was, and I started to have pretty dark thoughts and opinions. Again I felt connected to people, more disconnected from the outside world and this time it got much worse. I also had resentment towards everyone around me, thought they weren't who they said they were. I shut everyone out because I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was "cutting off problematic friends and family" when I was nitpicking about the things they did that were problematic (aka maybe watching a certain tv show with an actor that had done or said something questionable). I thought I wasn't addicted. I rationalized it in all the possible ways. Later when I did realize I was addicted, I said it was for the right reasons and I needed to stay "woke", because I didn't trust any other sources anymore. I wanted to quit the platforms but because I felt it would prevent me from doing online activism I stayed. This feels weird to say, but I felt very ashamed for being white. Not a "healthy dose of white guilt", but full-on, deep-rooted shame about who I was as a person because I was white. For a long time I was barely living in reality and started living in a fantasy almost, and deep down was aware of it and ashamed so it took a long time for me to own up to it. I spent a lot of time rationalizing why it wasn't as bad as I thought, or admitting to myself that I was addicted but not doing anything to change it. I was using alllll the platforms too, all of them except Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr. I eventually got a very close friend that's now my best friend basically through our mutual addiction. I think we enabled each other at times, but it was so good to finally have someone to relate to. I still sometimes fall back into my addiction, but I have real friends now and a life. There are a lot of liars on the internet. And why wouldn't there be, it's so easy to lie on there. There were times when I thought someone was so honest and so genuine, and so themselves that there was no way they could be bullshitting. But once I finally started independently researching, aka researching someone's background with a neutral mind and considering the option that they might not be who they say they are, I found out those exact people were lying and just how gullible I was being. It sucks getting lied to. The biggest liar is the platform itself. It's very hard to do good on there and simultaneously managing your addiction. If you can, it's better to do good in real life, with people you can meet face to face or at least text. So many things in my life got sabotaged because I couldn't quit, mostly my grades. I had trouble paying attention to things in my surroundings, I stayed up till late at night (in my teen years, I watched youtube every night until about 3 am a lot of times), I got massive anxiety and social anxiety that I'm still dealing with, I used my phone as a crutch to avoid interacting with people, everything that had to do with real life stopped being appealing to me, it just wasn't as exciting. But you don't need any reason to quit, you don't have to stay for any creator. For me I waited deleting because I didn't wanna say goodbye to all the people I followed who I felt personally connected to, but eventually I decided to just do it, and it felt like a huge weight off my shoulders and kind of setting myself free. Everyone deserves that.

Both Facebook and Reddit were the worst. Facebook was an endless scrolling distraction, removing me from myself, making me watch more and more far right content, and distracting me from my friends, family and work. I despised it, and decided that I should try to live without it - but I still had Reddit. Reddit was okay? Surely? It was a way to get the newest information about the world? So was Youtube? They were just videos. How wrong I was. Firstly; Reddit became a balm for my social anxieties, and paradoxically, also a stimulant of them. There you can frolic and get drunk on the syrup of humour, new information and the illusion of debate and community. Meanwhile you get slowly sucked in, spending more and more time on it. I began to be aware that I was believing things that...didn't exist. Or they did exist, it just felt more and more like a cult, a group of anger and not support. I found that strain of outrage and anger in all my communities - I tried to take a break, but would be dragged willingly to gorge on the dopamine rush, the faerie food of reddit. Youtube is the same; I began to watch more right things - "the intellectual dark web" slowly stepping onto more and more anger and outrage and "common sense." I tried just "unliking" all the video I saw. That did not work. Then I began using blocking apps to stop recommendations, and only show subscriptions, and limit my time on Youtube. Facebook, Youtube and Reddit all led to a warped image of who I was, of what I was worth. Youtube and reddit fed into each other and led to an echo chamber, which led to a depression. After that I tried everything to stop myself being on any social media - I feel a lot happier.

It was 2018 when I was in my first year of under graduation and I signed up on instagram...... After using it for 2 months I started feeling mentally disturbed as I felt self doubt, jealousy and anxious looking at various post of my friends on insta.....i used to compare myself to others for looks and followers and began hating myself.... I cried too sometimes about it.... So I started to unfollow people whose post induced negative feelings in my heart and also muted off the notifications of instagram ..... This Went for like 2 years and it was very hard for me to resist to not open the app....I even tried to disable my account but couldn't resist the urge to recover my account.... I asked myself why was I using insta.... It was taking toll on me as I felt like I m in prison so I deleted my insta account after lot of thought and hesitation ..... After deletion of my insta account , I felt so happy and started loving myself without comparing myself to others.... I started taking care of myself and my heart felt so free..... I stared focussing on my hobbies and work instead of worrying about my number of followers and feeling jealous about number of likes and comments on other ppl posts ........This has been one of the best decisions of my life .....Take care

My name is Isaac, I'm 16 and id like to share the impact social media has had on my entire existence. I was raised in an abusive household full of drugs and manipulation. My parents divorced when I was 7 and I had gotten a phone from my mother at the young age of 7 to contact my father because he was no longer in our household. Having been surrounded by the internet since such a young age I have a pretty decent understanding of media and it's effects on society today, I've witnessed people dying, pornography and animal abuse and more all by the age of 12 due to the unregulated internet and my young curious mind. Fast forward to high school I've experienced cyber bullying and lies created about me on social media which has been one of the causes me to get into fights and abuse multiple substances(Marijuana, LSD, MDMA, Adderall, etc.) This January I got kicked out of school due to those reasons coming back to bite me. Now, December 2020, I've graduated with an online program at the age of 16 and just recently I decided to delete social media. To delete the worry of what other people who I don't even talk to think about me, to delete the horrid things and false information that has been spread into my brain and into my peers brains. I'm finding the right direction no thanks to social media and I hope with my whole heart that future generations don't have to go through such scarring things. I am so glad I no longer waste away my days staring at a screen hiding internal conflict and I can contribute to society and move the world into a positive direction. I would love to help the social truth and help create ideas to end the societal sufferings my country and my planet are experiencing.

I downloaded TikTok for a short period of time out of peer pressure because all my friends had it and I wanted to see what it was like. I became addicted to it after a while and I remember just using it all day every day as much as I could. I remember one night specifically that was probably when I was at my peak of using that app when I just caught myself using it for a couple of hours without stopping, I just had this feeling of fear come over me as I realized that I was addicted to the app and without thinking about it I just deleted the app from my phone before I could second guess myself. I never got the app again nor did I get any other social media and I'm so so grateful for that decision. All of my other friends have Instagram and Tiktok and Snapchat and all of the other apps and I can really see how it affects them and how much they use it, I try to get them to use it less but it's hard and I really do think change needs to happen within the companies themselves in order to get this to stop.

Since I was born in the late 90s, like many others we had a time in our childhood where there wasn't any phones or social media. With that said, I was a teenager when iphones came out and I observed social media and the act of being online grow and grow. I realized early on that I didn't feel good when I used social media, I must've been around 17 (2013). I deleted all my social media. It made me feel overstimulated, like i had wasted hours of my time for nothing, and when i rejected social media (but kept facebook) I got criticism from my friends and family. At that point I saw how much social media was manipulating even the opinions of people around me. I really felt like this addiction to social media, which was so casually and socially accepted, was growing so much that there has to be a breaking point! And I'm so happy people are waking up and seeing how much it's hurting ourselves and the people we love and care about. I believe in the next 10 years things will look VERY different and it will be more humane!!!!! <3

I was around eleven or twelve when I first started really delving into social media as a whole. I was a young girl still- merely an insecure and immature child who was struggling with sexuality and unsure of where I fit in or belonged, so when I learned that I could roam the internet and make friends I was all ears. I downloaded Tik Tok (everyone was doing it, why not me too?) and I had Tumblr. I always avoided other social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat because I had heard all of the stories that people had shared about things that happened to them and their mental health- and I figured it wouldn’t happen to me if I just steered clear of particular sites so I allowed myself to dive deep into exploring the internet. I REGRET IT!!!My self confidence PLUNGED. When I was younger, I used to love myself so much, love my body and my personality and I never obsessed over the little things because everyone makes mistakes sometimes. I really struggled when I looked in the mirror after joining social media- I’m too fat, or I have ugly features, or my neck is too long, or my hair doesn’t frame my face correctly. I overthought every word that I spoke, for fear of being unliked by someone. It was always something, and it still comes back every once and a while. I also have seriously struggled with depression and anxiety that I never had before social media, and I overlooked it until I started to have suicidal thoughts and considered starving myself to loose weight. I hated myself, and I hated my life. I constantly saw people who hated other people over the littlest of things. I saw anon hate, as well as blind hatred out in the open with a name attached. I experienced hate myself. I saw posts of people who would tag “gay pride” or something only to talk horribly about it for the sole purpose of people in the LGBTQ+ Community to see it; and the same thing under other tags as well. So I, young and new to the internet, was faced with a harsh reality that people are not entirely kind, and there are hateful people who hate you even though they only know one thing or sometimes nothing about you. I was confused, and I was hurt.I deleted all of my social media accounts during the Coronavirus pandemic. It was bringing me so much more anxiety than I would normally have and it was weighing me down so much. After I deleted it, I started to feel so much better. The social media impact on mental health is insane- and it’s REAL. I never realized how bad it was until I deleted everything; my confidence is beginning to rise again, and my depression is getting better, and I have started loving myself again. I can walk around feeling good and confident in myself. Social media is meant to be a wonderful place, that’s what it was designed for. But people are cruel, and for some the internet’s poses as a mask to say whatever they should wish and never face consequences for it. After deleting social media, I saw the world around me again. The beauty of nature. The smell of old books. The sunrise and sunset. This was the world I was missing when I was on social media; the real, authentic world that I can touch and see and love because the world IS a wonderful place regardless of whether or not I can do a Tik Tok dance or not. Social media is bad- but it can be changed. It takes empathy and common decency that gets lost the more time you spend on the internet to create a world where we can al stand hand in hand no matter what your race, religion, sexuality, or anything else that makes us different. Being different is a beautiful thing- you shouldn’t hate me for liking a different anime character than you, and I shouldn’t hate you for liking a book that I don’t like. It is our differences that makes this world the place that it is; a diverse, beautiful place. With time and effort, social media could become healthier than it is now. But as for right this second? I recommend deleting your social media, or using your social media to raise awareness of how toxic we are being through the internet and how it is seeping into our everyday lives. You won’t regret deleting social media. It made things so much better for me and my health, and I am confident that it will do the same for anyone reading this who is struggling with mental health or self confidence like I was.

I’m getting my Master’s Degree in Mass Communications and Social Media (yes, social media), and will be graduating in December. I’ve absolutely loved the program thus far, and have learned more about the communications field and social media than I ever could have imagined. There have been many moments during the past year where I’ve felt so excited and hopeful about the field and the opportunities it brings. There have also been moments where I’ve felt uncertain about the field, even considering my own personal journey and realizations with social media. Beyond the intended benefits of connection and accessibility, I was seeing a toxicity from social media in my own life and the lives of the people around me. I began to fight this ethical battle in my head around the idea of someday contributing to the growth of toxicity in the field, or even just having to submerge myself in it for an income. In my Emerging Technologies class, we specifically learned different ways to keep users “hooked” to products and platforms by means of psychology. It was interesting from a creative and technical lens, but incredibly terrifying from the view of the consumer. I was suddenly realizing all of the methods and techniques that I was falling prey to, in a negative way. Later that semester, my professor assigned a reflection paper, and one of the questions was “are you excited about the emergence of technology and social media?”. To put simply, I wrote, “no, I’m not. In fact, I’m terrified. I see the benefits of connection and accessibility from both mediums, but I cannot ignore the impending negative impacts. When will it stop feeding us tailored information? When will it stop using our data for monetization? When will it stop affecting our mental health? I don’t know that it ever will”. I was expecting to get points taken off for my rant, but instead was met with an overwhelmingly agreeable response. I wasn’t the only one feeling this way about social media. I wasn’t the only one considering deleting every single app off my phone despite paying thousands of dollars for a master’s degree in the field. I wasn’t the only one seeing the problems that needed fixing in the industry. But that didn’t make me feel any better. There wasn’t some weight that lifted off my shoulders in learning I wasn’t alone. If anything, it added more pounds onto whatever weight I was carrying in the first place. Then I watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix. I obviously wasn’t met with any ease or calmness regarding my concerns with social media. However, seeing the former CEOs and Presidents of various social media platforms explaining their own frustrations with some of the systems they even helped to create gave me some much needed perspective. We are allowed, in fact encouraged, to be critical of the things we’re involved in or passionate about. Tristan Harris didn’t quit the field knowing what he knows; instead he remains in the field with hopes of fixing it. Fixing it starts with our own habits, and how we choose to be affected by the industry as consumers and contributors. Let’s limit our screen time. Let’s turn off our phones at night. Let’s turn off notifications for “who posted” or “who liked” and everything else that doesn’t matter. Let’s be intentional in our interactions beyond the phone screen. Let’s work to stop rewarding companies who use us as products with our time. Let’s acknowledge that we do not have to “cancel” social media to make it less toxic; instead we can work to make strides to steer the industry towards the way of positive growth for everyone. As I approach my (virtual) graduation and continue applying for jobs, I am keeping my ethics and desire to change this fragile and increasingly toxic industry at the forefront. While I see the obvious benefits of my industry and the many opportunities it provides for accessibility, growth, and connectivity, I also see the benefits of change and renovation as it pertains to ethics, health, and safety.

Nearly half of my day goes just into doom scrolling twitter, reddit and youtube. these are the three apps which am using currently since when i heard about the Cambridge analytica, the next hour after watching Chris wylie video on guardian youtube channel, i immediately deactivated my facebook account and started using Instagram and got way addicted than i was with facebook. This went on for a while and started seeing ads that crawled with me all along with the internet.one day me and friends were talking about buying a product which will be useful for us in the winter season and suddenly, the same exact product from the exact company which we were discussing about earlier popped up on my youtube ads. this was way weird and i started noticing every single detail of this ads creeping with me since am a front end developer and i know how ad sense works. but this was way weird since we were just talking about it and i have never searched on the internet for it. After few hours the same ads pops in my Instagram feed and i was like "what the f*** is happening". after a while my friend who was with me at that time faced the same thing in his Instagram feed. Right now everyone who was connected with same wifi in that room admitted that they were also seeing the same ad within hours after the i experienced it. So, i was convinced that there is a shared data log not just within facebook and Instagram, it was with different companies like youtube and instagram. soon after that i started deleted my instagram and found signal app much more convincing for my privacy issues. and till now i happily using signal as primary driver for communication. But this void was quickly filled with twitter and reddit. both never really were as intrusive as the facebook or instagram but now my addiction for social media is getting way more out of my control. When i came to know about the social dilemma movie, i knew hands down that this is going to make some tides in the tech community. the day after it came out on Netflix i watched it right away in the middle of my office hours as it was more important to me to cure this addiction i feel towards using social media. Now i feel way more stronger and brave to speak out something that i felt all these years. Thanks to tristan harris for noticing this evil trend and calling out everyone.

I don't even know where to begin. I created a facebook account when I was 19. I had a bad breakup and I was looking for ways to distract myself and facebook gave me the best platform to do that. I was in facebook all day along and eventually I facebook started determining my self worth. If someone comments on my post or messages me it will make me feel good. If my posts didn't get enough likes I would feel down. I started to get into fights with people over comments - the typical comment wars. I had a totally different persona on FB. It looked like I am an unapproachable rude person even though I am a humble person in real life. My fb contacts from university started perceiving me as my FB persona. It affected my self esteem a great deal. I felt awkward and shy to start a conversation with a new person. Where ever I went in campus I started to worry and wonder, who knows me and what they thought about me. I deleted my facebook account in last June and I feel really better. My self esteem has improved a great deal and I am really content, without knowing who got into relationship with whom and not getting into comment wars. People are taking social media way too serious. Yet again, when you enter into it, you get lost into a different kind of world that sucks you into it.

Last night, I compared myself to different models and couples on Instagram. Then I went to look for the meaning or definition in psychology on why I need to compare myself to others?And I felt sadness, my self-esteem was at its lowest, these images are ideological, the things that are no longer fashionable, the problems of buttons, and indirectly I feel influenced by all that.And that influences my conversations with my friends. By talking about it with my close friends, I decided to uninstall my account. I decided to just uninstall without disconnecting my account to start. To keep consistency.Sometimes I feel like I can't tell the difference between the image and my life, and I remembered a comment from my big sister who told me that she had a clothing style influenced by networks.While my best friend was talking to me, I noticed that she adopted the same style that we find in some videos we see on Tik-Tok, it is so above us, we have very little latitudeI find that a lot of young people post quotes about the right way of life. And that is completely wrong, that is not at all our reality. Many famous people publish quotes and young people take examples on it, it is serious.

I used to be an avid twitter user. I used it to follow various celebrities that I liked. I knew it was time for me to leave that platform when I realized that I was walking on eggshells, scared to say something wrong that would make the other strangers in the communities I was apart of angry. I had watched other users get bullied off the app when they had made a mistake or said something wrong and when I realized I was genuinely scared to say anything for fear of “being cancelled” I knew it was time to leave.

Social media had always been in the background for me. Something to check to in-between classes, whenever I was bored, and before I went to sleep. Then, quarantine hit, and I graduated from high school. Quarantine meant being bored 24/7 which meant my social media usage went up, up, up. And upon graduating high school, I started becoming aware that I had to start upping my game to get experiences on my resume, and in order to get experiences on my resume, I had to go out and find them. So I joined a bunch of Facebook groups, discord servers, slack channels, and subreddits. What resulted was a ritual which occurred several times a day where I would first check my iCloud email, then my gmails, then linkedin, then reddit, then Facebook, then discord, then Slack, and then, of course Instagram. Over the course of quarantine I became addicted to my phone and checking every single notification that came through, because you never knew what kind of opportunities I could miss out on if I missed a single notification. My morning time ritual became an afternoon ritual to a night ritual, to an all day ritual where I would habitually check my phone every hour, eagerly waiting for the next notification to come in. I’m currently trying to curb my usage, but I’ll be honest, it’s hard. Especially because the truth is you can’t find good opportunities without the resources online. But I’m trying. It’s going to take a long long journey for me to stop feeling phantom notifications and constantly refreshing my feed...

Freshman year I got grounded and had my phone taken away for a majority of the year. When i finally got it back i forgot how to even turn it on and vaguely remembered my password. In the beginning it was hard because it thought that I was gonna die without my phone and social media. In the middle i would ask my mom if i could have it back like every few weeks and then in the end i didn't even notice it was gone. I feel like losing the privilege I've had a majority of my life was daunting in its own way. I feel like it was a great learning experience and that I could take in my surroundings better. I learned that life was beautiful without a phone screen in my face all the time. Now as a junior in high school I have my cellular turned off so I can enjoy the car rides I take with my family and so I can take in my surroundings.

I got on social media around high school, and I saw people become more distant because of it. There used to be such freedom in the way that we behaved as kids, and now people were obsessing over likes and hearts and everything. For me using social media like Facebook made me feel terrible and self-conscious, and I'd compare myself constantly to the lives of friends. Asking myself, why isn't my life as cool as theirs? Why are they so much more popular than me? It was really bad for my mental health. Along with that I used Instagram and Twitter, and over time my attention span got completely decimated - I was so used to short posts I'd look at for 2-3 seconds, that I couldn't even focus on anything for a long period of time anymore. Twitter was good at first but around 2016 onwards it just became a cesspool of hate, criticism, and negativity. I couldn't believe it when I saw people wishing death upon others even when the topic was like, video games or something. There was a time I went on holiday with a friend from primary school, we were basically best friends. She didn't get off her phone the whole time! It was like the relationship had been replaced by a digital device, and I notice it with even couples who are dating who literally don't even look at each other, they look at their phones. The one thing that really sickens me is I have always been a creative person, obsessed with music and drawing and writing. I went from reading 30 books a day as a kid to not being able to read the first few paragraphs. My brain felt like it'd been hijacked. I've deactivated my insta, facebook and twitter and I still use reddit and youtube - I got rid of the recommendations though.Ever since 2012 I felt like the world was going insane and I couldn't figure out why. People seemed more stressed, more anxious, self-conscious. Things felt like they were going bad all at once, and the 24/7 cycle makes the world's problems seem right outside our bedroom door. I used to love OG facebook and youtube. They were so cool. But lately I've been wondering about the price we had to pay.

There was a time in 2017 when I began to notice the effects of social media algorithms on my community. I had just set off for University in Montreal, Canada as a psychology student. I was excited to make new friends and engage with communities away from where my hometown in Northern California. But unfortunately it was during this time that I feel the power of the algorithms started to take off and have a palpable effect on the people around me. My peers began shifting from jovial university freshman to bitter introverts. The common tropes fuelling the simmering resentments among my friend groups ranged from the common and occasionally entertaining rants by young women about how they "hated men" to more shocking and confusing ideas such as "killing the bourgeoisie." Statements such as the latter were more common than I was comfortable with and I continually found myself blown away these ideas could be casually raised while hanging out at bars on Friday nights. People I had known for years becoming bitter enemies over politics was an all too common occurrence. But for me the most painful part of this sudden onset of social media tribalism was the subtle ever-present underlying sense of being policed by the people around you, sometimes the people closest to you. The feeling that I had to be "clean" and free from the blemishes of political or social nuance. Blending in with the binary "rights" and "wrongs" of ideology. I should mention that generally I'm a very agreeable and politically correct person. However, as my community became more hostile I became more and more convinced that I had extreme positions that should not be spoken. Soon after feeling the weight of all of this I began to investigate my own Facebook and Instagram feeds and got a sense of the source of the issue. 2018 was the year that I could not shut up about algorithms, as I was genuinely afraid of what was happening. I learned what I could primarily through the writings and lectures of Jaron Lanier, as he is the only figure I found who I felt treated the problem with the appropriate degree of seriousness. Our society cannot bare the weight of continued polarization. I was so delighted with the release of the Social Dilemma. With the film as our foundation I feel we have the tools to genuinely address this issue.

When I was around 16-17 I was fully addicted to social media. I would spend hours on end scrolling through instagram, tiktok, snapchat or any platform that would give me any type of dopamine rush. At that time, being 16 I would see so many perfect girls, with perfect bodies and flat stomachs and that made me feel insecure, and I did not have any one to talk to because I thought I was the only person that was going through this. Though I hated being on social media it was like I could not stop scrolling through it. When I was having lunch or dinner I was on my phone, when I was hanging out with friends I was on my phone, and I could feel my relationships slipping away from me. I vividly remember one day when I was having lunch with one friend, we ordered and immediately when our food came we both started taking photos of it and posting them on instagram or snapchat. A second after that I thought to myself "we look so stupid , instead of talking and being together we are just on our phones", so after that I decided that I would not have lunch with my phone on the table when I was with friends and I would tell them to not be using them, because I felt like I was not having any meaningful talks or time with my friends. I am 19 now, I still am addicted, but now i have decided that I am more powerful than the platforms are. I decided to delete most of my social media, realizing that it would not bring any good to my life and it would just take time that I could be using to study or go outside to nature.

Hello! I'm 23 years old student from Greece!I would love to share my experience about the best decision I have ever made in my life! Deleting my Facebook and Instagram accounts has completely changed my lifestyle, my thoughts, my days, everything! There was a period of time I was addicted to Instagram, Insta Stories etc. Then, I started thinking.. Why do I watch others personal stories? Why do I spend so much time watching what others do? Do I really care? Why do I share my personal life?? I post my personal moments or thoughts or everything to people that I don't even know or care about their opinion.. After deleting my Instagram account, I've started spending a lot of time scrolling on Facebook... Everything has changed when I watched "the social dilemma". When I watched this amazing documentary, I immediately deleted my facebook account. I got so sick of this system and the advertisements. I really don't need these applications and no one does. I am so happy now. I have new hobbies and the most important thing is that whoever wants to talk to me, he'll call me. He won't remember me cause I just uploaded a photo, or a story... Congratulations to all those people who participated in this documentary. Great work and great team! The tips in the end are super helpful.

I literally grew up with social media. Some of my earliest vivid memories are trying to figure out how I could get make a Multiply account despite being way underage. I spent many pre-teen summers playing pet society and farmville, or on youtube watching random videos. As the internet developed, so did I. I never really realized how detrimental it was to me or my mental health. Looking back, it was probably because my generation's parents were learning how to use technology at the same time. At that point, no one really understood how much it could actually do. Every kid was on social media then because it wasn't a huge deal, it was just like getting a new toy. While I do love that I grew up on social media so I get to look back at so many wonderful memories, that also means that I watched firsthand as it grew to be such a vile place. What used to be wholesome photos, statuses, and games became a cause for outrageous fighting between creators, and divisive moral, political, and religious rhetoric. I became more conscious of my social media use as I entered college, but it never really bothered me until I started looking at my screen time. Even now during the pandemic, I'd feel so ashamed about how much time I'd be on my devices if you combined my laptop, ipad and, phone. The social dilemma and discovering CHT's work, made me feel seen but also incredibly frustrated. I felt trapped because social media was hardwired into my brain as it developed when I was a kid. I didn't sign up for it, and yet here I am 12-ish years later trying to undo things that are inevitably fundamental to who I am. I started with little things like deleting some apps on my phone and ipad, as well as turning off notifications and trying to follow downtime more responsibly. The pandemic has made it really difficult to become responsible social media user, especially as a college senior with tons of extracurriculars. How can you lessen screen time when your entire window to the world is through your screen? Despite all that, I'm pretty hopeful that I'll eventually be able to have ownership of my social media use. Until then, the discomfort of not having notifications or youtube recommendations will have to do.

I started my social media experience back in middle school (2008-2009) on MySpace, spending my free time checking on friends, doing bulletin board surveys, and learning to code in HTML to customize my page. After MySpace, I moved to Facebook in high school (2009-2013), I got sucked in more to what people thought of me, what I was being tagged in, liking pages, getting likes on my photos... I was sick of it, so I deactivated my profile when I graduated. I joined Instagram in the summer of 2013. At first, it was similar to Snapchat and Facebook; I used it to communicate with friends and see what they were up to. Then I started following cool travel pages, celebrities, movements, news sites... and I find myself with a feed of pretty pictures from people I don’t even know. I realize I now have this unproductive habit of mindlessly scrolling through these pretty pictures, which is something I never used to do. I’ve thought about deleting my Instagram, but I instead want to re-evaluate my use of it. I’ve turned off all notifications and I’ve begun a huge unfollowing spree for those accounts of people and groups I don’t know. I find it useless to be spending time staring at photos of beautiful places when I could instead be earning money to get myself there. I find it useless to be staring at beautiful women who I know are fake or portraying themselves in the best light they can find, looking at myself as inferior when I know the great shape I am in. Come to find out (big surprise), likes or comments on a photo do not affect my real life, and spending time focusing on them is a waste. I’ve put my phone in grayscale mode so that it’s not as pretty to look at, and I’m finding that I get sucked into those scrolling traps less. If I were to identify a specific problem, it’s the culture of influencers we’ve built and given our attention to. Travel influencers, fitness influencers, food influencers... pages to follow, scroll through, and mindlessly get lost in while letting all of our other responsibilities fall to the side. We find ourselves without enough time in the day, but never complain about the loads of meaningless funny videos we spend an hour watching and sharing (taking other people’s time from them). I want to unfollow all influencers. I only want to see my friends and people I know on my timeline, and then I want to make the conscious decision to check on them when I want to — NOT get trapped into scrolling through all of them. I would rather participate in a social media service without “Pages to Follow” like Facebook and without Influencers like Instagram. Mindless phone scrolling is the dumbest pastime that does absolutely nothing besides make us yearn for things we aren’t or don’t have. When I’m with my significant other, I don’t feel the need to touch my phone ALL day. It just proves it’s a habit based in boredom that breeds lower productivity. I hate it. I feel much better and more in control with my phone in grayscale mode and by following less accounts I don’t know. I have implemented time restraints of 30 minutes per day for my Instagram. I am inclined to reduce that to 15 minutes. I want to use the platforms to connect with my friends and that’s all. Share photos with my friends, not care about likes, and that’s ALL. All I want is an environment that facilitates that.

Social media... Where to start? There were many times I fell into that common spiral of comparing my life to that of the glitz and glamour I saw on-screen. I've lost a cousin to suicide who I would've never guessed had depression because of what he posted. I've also had to endure the harmful effects of cyberbullying, the constant validation-seeking and "needing-to-prove" mentality, and so on. While both experiences affected me greatly, they opened up my eyes to the bigger picture: What we see on the Internet is not always what's happening in reality; It's just a fraction. In order for my experiences on social media to feel more fulfilling and positive, I started working towards using it less. Eventually, I found myself only keeping up with those I maintained connections with. I deleted my Facebook account in 2018 and always went back to Twitter but finally deleted it this year after seeing a bunch of political debate that often looked like unhealthy arguments. Something that I also do often and consciously so is de-cluttering my Instagram feed every once in awhile. That meant following accounts that were good for my mental health, and unfollowing a number of other accounts. Over time, social media become more of a fun and creative outlet. It's been a more authentic, intimate experience. Having a healthier relationship with social media makes life easy, relieves social pressure, and also allows me to genuinely connect with those I care about and care about me. These days, mental health issues are on the rise and social media usage is making it hard to live life. Some platforms are so addictive that it's hard to maintain self-awareness and have control. I think it's important it is to separate digital worlds from the life that's unfolding right in front of us. True human connection is what the world needs now more than ever. I hope that the industry can becomes healthier for society's sake, and that people don't have to experience the harmful effects before they take it upon themselves to change their habits.

My experience on social media has always been very love hate. I have a very hard time getting off Instagram when I need work to be done. I cannot help but waste hours on the explore page and watching people's stories. In an effort to stop my time wastage on the app, I have used time limits and unfollowed almost 200 of the 400 people I follow. Still, I find it very hard to get off. On top of that, the app definitely shows a false sense of reality. I feel bad after being on the app, as if I am missing out on something important and that people look better than me. With the being said, I am still a very happy person and thankfully this does not affect me deeply, but I think that's the case because I limit myself so much. I have disabled my account for months on end and feel GREAT and productive and free without the app. However, as soon as I get it back I fall back into my old ways. I would get it back with the excuse that I need it to stay up-to-date on school events. With COVID there is not much going on and I graduate in a semester. So I disabled my account for good. I won't get rid of it in case I need it for school but I wish I was able to just let it go altogether. I started Instagram when I was 16 so not that young, but I still have a hard time letting it go. I barely post but use it for the explore page and looking up people. I always and still to this day feel that without an Instagram account you are seen as weird or introverted. I feel that if I do not have an Instagram I am the odd one out. I wish I never made one in the first place, I have never gotten any direct benefits from the app. It just clutters my brain and causes negative affects. I also have the pressure of having to keep up with DMs from friends. I do not want to have to constantly check and respond to their images and videos they share. I don't like the expectation of having to like someone's post or view their story. I literally do not care about 95% of the people I follow nor do I see them with or without COVID, but I still "have" to follow them. I am so excited to actually let it go and connect with my family and real friends more. I am so happy for this movement and hope that many people realize that Instagram isn't that important and is actually a waste of time.

When I was in 7th grade, someone who I thought was my best friend was emotionally abusive for over a year on Snapchat. He sent me videos of him self harming, would tell me he would commit suicide then not respond for hours to scare me, make me spend hours and hours of my energy to talk him off the ledge, and make me feel like I was never good enough to save him. Seeing a notification from him made my heart drop, since it was usually something terrifying, but I could never turn away. If I left him on open or on delivered, I was scared he would die. If I didn't spend all of my energy on typing pages and pages of chats trying to help him, I was scared he would die. The whole time I thought I was just being a good friend. This unmonitored exchange of Snapchats completely traumatized me and robbed me of my innocence, happiness, and trust in future friends. Since he lived far away, I thought Snapchat was the only way I could possibly keep this emotionally draining friendship, and since I was on Snapchat 24/7, I could never get away from him. I ended up ending our friendship because he threatened to kill my friend and her entire family lol, but I was left emotionally scarred, and this single friendship over Snapchat caused me myself to fall down a rabbit hole of depression, anxiety, OCD, suicidal ideation, and self harm. While the real person to blame was the friend, Snapchat's addictive layout and system of highs and lows set the emotional harm over the edge.

I felt so insecure about myself. My abilities, my looks, my roots, my potential. This because I was comparing my life with people around me and people I saw on social media. I never realized being different is my key to joy and happiness. I still struggle with social media because I think I can't miss out. It has been integrated in my being because I've been using it since I was a teenager. I'm sort of afraid that I'll miss important updates about people and the world when I would delete it. It feels like I'm not strong enough to make this decision. I often doubt about it and this doubt is eating away my believes of having a great willpower. I used to be on Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter but I got rid of that attraction. Now I only feel being stuck with Instagram especially. And YouTube sometimes as well.

Earlier this year when the Social Dilemma came out, I - just like everyone else - flocked over to Netflix to watch it. I'd heard about it from school and after watching it I felt INSPIRED. This motivation to break away from technology coursed through me. I took all the measures: detoxed my phone, even deleted apps, limited phone use. I joined seminars and tried to become a part of this amazing community, this movement. Obviously, this doesn't sound like your normal "technology ruined me" story, but just wait.......So everything was going well, I was reaching my goal of having a good relationship with technology. And then it all stopped. There was no more adrenaline, and slowly those apps I had deleted reappeared on my phone. Not only did I go back to my former self, but I also got worse. WAY WORSE. I got addicted. The worst part is that I knew what I was doing was wrong, I knew the dangers of the endless scroll, but I still got sucked in. It caused me to push aside my studies, my education, my GOALS. I know what it's like to be a caged bird because I was social media held me captive. These small apps on my phone made me fall into depression, and I felt the only way to not feel sad was to use those very apps. If you've never experienced addiction, a small warning, it sucks. I mean that literally: it sucks you in and prevents you from being happy, reaching your dreams, or living life. You must be wondering how I'm so self-aware of all this now. Well bad things to end, and by the extreme measures of my parents, I lost my phone. Which was the root of all my issues. When my phone went I needed to accept that it was over, and that's when I saw the damage I had caused in my own life. I had nothing else to do so I fixed it. I'm still fixing it. It's not easy, I'll say that, but I've truly experienced life after coming out from this dark place. You don't realize how beautiful the world is if you stare at your phone all day. I realized how much I hadn't noticed about the people around me and myself. Now a little advice for everyone who's suffering as well. Sure the phone gives you happiness but you can use it whenever you want. Even if it's for an hour, go outside and breathe the fresh air. Go for a walk or play with your dog. I promise you will feel happier and lighter. We aren't here for long - life is short - so don't waste it on a device that will outlive you.

There's been real tension in my household lately, and social media has been my sort of coping mechanism. When I felt alone and hopeless, I could just scroll through instagram and not feel like crying anymore. I've never been allowed to go out much, so when I felt disconnected with my friends, I just spread my face across snapchat so I could talk to new people. I got addicted, always checking my phone, obsessed with keeping my streaks, worrying that someone needed my attention 24/7. I thought that was great to be needed, interested in, and meeting interesting people, until some of those people started asking things of me that I'm not comfortable with. Disconnected once again, I deleted snap and went back to my default scroll. Then I watched the social dilemma and really got to see that I wasn't the only one having these types of problems. I started to limit my screen time, schedule my days according to online school, pick up other hobbies I haven't done in a while like drawing, being part of the church choir, ect. I still don't have the best social life, but at least I'm spending my time alone productively.

Social media has always been in my life from snapping people to just posting funny pictures on Instagram. I don’t think I remember a time in my teen life that I haven’t had a phone with social media on it. As I get older I realize that there are way better things in life than just obsessing over it. As I look back in life I can see how many fun things I missed out on because of social media and trying to post all the fun things I didn’t instead of just living in the moment. After I thought of this I started to back away from social media and just live my life and I feel free. I don’t have to worry about other people’s validation in my life and I can just be who I want to be and live my life the way I want to live my life.