The social media addiction

in #nigeria7 years ago


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When I joined Facebook back in highschool, it was not because I really had a need for it at the time. I joined Facebook due to the fact that every cool kid had a Faceboook acount back then. It felt really cool flaunting my username around and we were always in a competition to see the person with the highest number of friends.

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I wasted several hours of my life sitting with my phone, not really engaging in discussions that benefitted my life in anyway. Every single moment I spent at home was spent conversing with my friends, talking about silly things. If I look back at those conversation now, I can do nothing other than to wince in embarrassment at the silly things I had done.
To worsen the situation, someone, who I can't remember started spreading rumours about how you could get paid for using your account when you reached a certain level (I guess he managed to see into the future and was looking at (Steemit).This only made me intensify my efforts on using Facebook and I had time for nothing else in my life. I always wanted to see every new update there was, I was always passing comments about things and I even spent several minutes, carefully concocting what my next status was going to be. A person could tell a comprehensive story of my life as it contains everything I did back then.

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My entire life orbited around Facebook. Parents often complain about the amount of time their kids spent watching the television. However, I became a stranger to the television.
Whenever I was not on any form of errand, I was on Facebook. My mother eventually started seizing my phone from time to time and this made my life miserable. This was when I found out that I could not go a day without Facebook. I was virtually addicted to Facebook. I was not the only one affected with this Facebook "craze" as several young people were also affected with the condition.

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After sometime, I started working on breaking free from this addiction but just like drugs, it was not easy and when I eventually did, the allure of other social media platforms still kept attracting me but as I had seen the power Facebook held over me, I did all I could to abstain from the (A major reason why I did not join Twitter). Eventually, I fell head over heels for 2go. 2go suddenly started making lots of waves in Nigeria and became the new definition of cool. Every "cool" person, regardless of their age could be found on 2go and it was really interesting. The higher one's activity is on 2go, the higher his star ratings go. Even late at night, I was always active on 2go and it really deprived me of a lot of sleep during my final year in high school.

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And BBM? Blackberry phones were quite expensive back in the days and you were seemed as a classy person when you had a blackberry phone and it became the norm for people to ask for your blackberry pin, instead of your phone number. So many people did silly things, just to purchase Blackberry phones. I would not even accept. Today, if some of the models people tried to kill themselves over were given to me for free, I would not accept them. You could find individuals everywhere with their blackberry phones in hand, pinging their various contacts.

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These Social media platforms caused several accidents, which made some individuals handicapped, while resulting in the death of others. One person might get too absorbed in what he was doing and might not be aware of some oncoming vehicle. his happened quite frequently and the results were not often pleasant. Even I nearly got involved in accidents on several occasions from 2go and Facebook respectively.

A billion thanks to @elyaque for this incredible badge

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It is as if you are speaking directly to me...every paragraph of this article is a direct message to me back in <2014. I however broke free of all these social media app in early 2015, and i have not been more thankful ever since.

Thanks for this wonderful piece.

It is your 'Naija' boy... @eurogee

You're covered brother, I wonder if people control their Social media accounts or if their accounts control them.

I seriously wish i could take back all my time spent on Facebook and LinkedIn and put it back here......

But pfttt, it's all gone...

exactly on point

Nice piece of content and true story!
Upvoted and followed :-)