011225 - opinion: we need to reduce how much we use the internet by yesterday

hey yall. todays blog i’m gonna talk about how we use the internet for way longer than we need to. the internet is awesome! there is so much awesome stuff on the internet! im not going to deny that! but having internet access all the time, in my opinion, is killing us. its making us braindead! i feel like we shouldnt be spending more than 3 hours tops on the internet recreationally, and even then im being generous. however there are so many people who use the internet for like, 20 hrs a day! THIS ISNT GOOD FOR US!

disclaimer, im going to be very hypocrite in this because i either do or have done these things before! im not shaming on people who do these things or acting like im better, i completely understand what its like do things like this! but i feel like it really comes across like i am shaming and acting like im better, so plz keep in mind that im not!

im gonna sound quite aggressive in this first paragraph, so if ur sensitive plz scroll onwards! ♡ 

i cannot stand it when people who are chained to their devices and need to bring it with them everywhere they go. im not talking about like, i need my phone with me so i can contact someone if somethings happens, i need it so i can keep myself occupied when i get bored, i just need my phone with me, im talking about people who always have something going on a screen. do your eyes not hurt? how can you function with a screen playing something 24/7? do not get me STARTED on people who have 6 million screens open at once. why do you need your laptop and your phone and the tv on and you playing a game all at once? there is no way all of those devices are serving a purpose to you. do not lie in my face and say youre paying attention to both the show you have on tv and video playing on youtube and the music playing from your phone and the thing youre looking at on tiktok and the game youre playing. i hate when im trying to live my life and theres bs on everyones screen hurting my eyes and playing noise that no one is paying attention to. its hell! 

the internet is awesome, but it is NOT a thing we should have access to all the time. we used to have a device for contacting people, a device for music, a device for games, a device for pictures, and a stationary device that stayed at home for accessing the internet. the devices for contacting people, taking pictures, music, and maybe the game device stayed with you and the internet device sat in your living room. i like this idea! you can use the internet for all that is awesome, like music videos or finding out what the top 5 gayest hardcore breakdowns are, but you can leave the internet whenever you want. now, the device that has all the essential features, like contacting, music, taking pictures, and games also has unlimited access to the internet. you can no longer leave the internet, its in your back pocket, on your bedside table, everywhere. the whole world rests in your palm and you are forced to see all that is good and bad about it all the time! this isnt healthy! i feel like im always being tracked or stalked in some way when i use social media. like someones entering my brain and changing all of my thoughts and my datas being sold on the black market and theres at least 6 people who know my exact location. not being connected to the internet feels more freeing. no ones tracking what im doing, no ones asking me to buy things, i dont have to see ai, i only have to see what i choose to see. my religion teacher said that the reason its harder for teens to live today is because for example, if someone put a magazine in front of her when she was a teen, she had the choice as to whether she would read it or not. nowadays, we dont get a choice! we need phones to function in todays society, and the things its best we avoid or dont wanna see are shoved in our faces regardless! the way people talk on social media and edit their posts are made in a way for us to believe what the person is saying and think what they think, which is an especially great harm to the malleable brains of teens! but even if you arent a teen, it affects you, because i see so many people caring about stuff theyd never care about if it werent for the media blowing these issues up. i bet no one would care about trans people as much if it wasnt for the media demonising us! (i might talk abt this issue in a whole seperate blog, i feel very strongly abt this..)

people can think for themselves, but we arent really allowed to do so. if i ask someone about their opinion on a topic trending online, i hear the same recycled response i see in all the comment sections. when i try debate them a little bit or simply say what i think, theyre immediately like “yessss *the opinion they said before* *some hint of my opinion* thats what ive been sayingggg” but its so obvious they havent even considered what ive told them!! they’ve just had to believe what the internet deems the least ‘problematic’ at risk of being left out or wrong. (i really hate the culture of ‘problematic’ and ‘unproblematic’ but ill make another blog abt that later!). and this isnt the fault of the people. i dont blame them at all. its just how our society works now and how social media conditions us to act. you never really notice this stuff until you really think and realise, huh, i dont actually think this, i just agree with what others are saying. a lot of issues on the internet that are really big are the biggest non issues ever. social media inflates small topics into large issues and the only way you can feel about it is incredibly against it or incredibly for it. theres not much space for leeway or nuance. (im about to talk about a topic that has been dragged to death on this site, im not going to talk about the situation itself, im just going to quickly talk about the reception). take the charlie kirk shooting for example (pauses so you can sigh bc youve been hearing about it too much). i had mixed feelings about it and i didnt really care that much. but people in the internet only felt incredibly strongly, either the most against it or the most for it. there isnt space for you to not care because the algorithm pushes these issues like this whether you care or not, and you have to either make a choice where youre radically for or against, or just infinitely scroll until you find one piece of content that isnt about the shooting. 

just a little extra bit, but i feel like excessive internet use is making us lose our culture, or at least in australia. i think we can all agree social media pushes a lot of american content! sometimes i see old interviews from the 1950s-2000s of news reporters interviewing regular australian people about issues in our country, and i notice how much more… ‘australian’?… everyone seems? like, i can tell this is a video from australia. even videos from the 2020s! they have strong accents, but i feel like im loosing my accent because of social media and i feel really sad about it! i also feel like we dont have that much community anymore, atleast not locally. i feel like social media has killed those local bonds.. i feel like people arent thinking about their own lives as much as they are thinking about social medias life. we care a lot about issues on social media, but we arent really paying attention to what is happening in our lives right now! im sorry this part is kinda confusing, idk how to articulate it properly to say what im trying to say. if social media making you feel less like your nationality is an issue with you too, plz leave a comment (if youre comfortable)! im curious to see if this is an issue with other people or if its just me.

thx for reading my blog. if you’re considering using the internet less, or making the internet a place in your home again instead of a thing that follows you around all the time, i highly recommend! i stopped using social media so much in september and i feel very free. 

🙏 BLESS 🙏