I’m 17 And I Deleted All My Social Media. Here’s What Happened.

& why you should delete them too.

Social media. The time wasting, addictive drugs that let us subliminally express our deepest narcissistic thoughts.

At least, that’s how I saw them. Maybe your situation is different.

Like any powerful tool, social media can be used for good, as well as bad — and in my particular case, it was bad.

Let me tell you this, social media is a whole different monster for a 17-year-old. Everyone my age is spending hours every day snapchatting, instagraming, facebooking — and whatever else.

If you’re not involved — you’re an outsider. You’re looked at as weird and stupid. A loser. You’ll struggle to get invited to events and people won’t want to be friends with you. Sad, but unfortunately that’s just the way things are.

Remember that one kid who was always chosen last to play games? That’s essentially how kids who don’t use social media are looked at.

I’m proud to admit that I am now “that kid”, who (happily) gets ignored because I’m no longer what would be considered “relevant”. Luckily, I was always too good for them anyway.

I’m no longer regularly putting up Instagram posts, rigorously working out how many likes per minute I’m getting… Nor am I deleting a photo if it didn’t get at least 150 likes.

In hindsight, the fact that I ever put so much effort and time into it all makes me sooo incredibly mad and embarrassed.

Do you know how many books I could have read with all that wasted time instead?!

Let’s do the maths. I got a phone when I was 13. I’m 17.5 now. I can easily say I’ve spent around 3 hours on social media every day since then, therefore:

17.5–13= 4.5 x 365 = 1642 x 3 = 4927 hours wasted.

I don’t even want to get into what I could’ve accomplished in those 4927 hours. A ridiculous amount.

Nevertheless, getting worked up over things like this is pointless. There is a Chinese proverb that goes —

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

I think it’s relevant. It’s never too late to start over.