The Media and I are Going Steady

My relationship with the media is a bit abusive. I am constantly exposing myself and taking in everything technological, as I have for years prior to when I became aware of it. Since I was a youngin, I was regularly exposed to common TV shows and their advertising, but it hadn't occured to me that the advertising was anything other than an interruption. That form of media is kind of like the boyfriend in second grade that doesn't count. I then had to keep up with the "cool" in fifth grade and get a facebook.
That was my first real relationship with the media. I would get home and log on and chat the heck away. It was a party.

At that point, though, I still hadn't made the connection of how immensley the media pertained to my life and my desires. I wanted to do whatever everyone else on facebook was doing, but I don't think I realized that it was facebook that was making me want it. I said all the common phrases that were going around facebook and I posted things that were "relevant" at the time. I still believed that what I wanted and the way I acted was genuinely the way I was, unaltered.

It was in middle school where the relationhip got serious. I got an instagram(!), of course because everyone was getting one. It was a great period of my life. My little circle of relevance still mainly revolved around my friends and food, as my seventh grade bio would suggest, but I became more aware of how anything "cool" was something that was getting big hype on instagram. I think it was around middle school that I began to realize how social media affected everything I did and the reason I did it. I no longer wanted to just hang out with my friends, I wanted to hang out with my friends to take cool pictures and post them with a funny caption. My social media at the time dictated the way I spent basically all my freetime. 

That was also the time I stopped doing other normal activites like spending time outisde or reading or sleeping. I was so absorbed in creating an online image of myself, that everything else just fell to the side. 

ALSO the time I began to procrastinate. 

Ever since, Media and I spend all my time together. I trick myself into thinking that I have no time to do all these great adventurous things like explore nature, or read for pleasure, or even communicate with my family as much because I simply don't have any time. But deep, way deep down I know that I have a billion hours of freetime, I just waste them on my darling Media. I've gotten way too involved with things that I know are completely absurd. I know that social media is an absolute waste of time for me, yet I am on it religiously. I probably checked all my social media accounts (at least?) ten times already while writing this. My self-control level is currently at a negative thirty nine. 

Med and I have gotten in a few arguemnts. I delete social media apps during the weekdays, sometimes not all the time not regularly but sometimes not a lot of times, because I get so easily distracted. So we've been on and off and I realized I am so much more productive without the media bombarding me with messages and ads and stories that I don't need to care about. But it's simply so much easier to be passive about everything and just take it all in through mass media rather than have to think and question everything I see and hear. It's a matter of convenience and simplicity. That's what all great relationships are about(?)

Here's an accurate representation of my relationship with the media.