Social Media Commitment

Nowadays more and more people are connected with each other on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Dribbble and so on. While you can use Facebook more privately—at least me, my friends and many other people I know use it to be connected with people we also know in real life—the focus of social networks like Twitter, Instagram and Dribbble is to follow anybody.

What all those social networks have in common is that all its members can publish contents whenever they want, which can immediately be seen by their friends and followers. If a friend of mine or a person I follow and who follows me publishes something, I have the option to like it, comment on it or share it.

After a while you get either bored of it or—what happened to me—addicted to it. I liked almost everything published by my friends and people I follow whether I liked it or not. Additionally I started to check my social networks more and more often. After some time I spent more time liking other people’s stuff than working on my own stuff. I also got mad when my friends and followers didn’t like all of my stuff that I published.

After some more time I noticed that I got more and more stressed the more I checked my social networks—and through that stress anger developed. Anger about my friends and followers for not liking and commenting on all the stuff I posted and created. Instead of leaving my stress and anger at the computer I carried it with me and let it out on my girlfriend, my family and my friends in real life.

Of course they all didn’t like that I seemed to be mad at them because of something that happened on the internet and that didn’t have anything to do with them. I finally realized that they were right and that I had to change something in my (internet) life. I started to use the social networks less and only liked the stuff that was really appealing to me. I also realized that my biggest fear was not being liked and losing friends and followers. Like in real life internet friends will still be your friends in the future regardless of whether you like all their stuff or not. If they don’t want to be your friend or don’t want to follow you anymore just because you don’t like and/or comment on everything they publish, they aren’t real internet friends.

Instead of wasting too much time with liking and commenting stuff on the internet, focus on the stuff that you produce and—what is even more important—spend time with your family and real life friends.