Why Leaving Social Media Might Make You a Better Person

Social media has led to a lot of great things - from sharing cute dog videos to the reunion of twins separated at birth. But have you ever thought about what your life would be like without social media?

I’m willing to bet that you have, and for a number of different reasons. Maybe you want more free time to learn the tuba or volunteer. And while that sounds fine and dandy - in fact, it probably sounds like a better life than you have with social media - the idea of being disconnected from the world scares you. But what if I told you that quitting social media would make you a better person?

Empathy vs. Social Media

A study done by the sociology department at the University of Michigan found that “college kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.” What does that mean? Well, it means that people between the ages of 18-24 aren’t as concerned about seeing things from other people’s perspective as they used to be. But why? Because we’ve started talking to computers instead of people.




Angry Facebook Comments

Think about it this way: if you’re hanging out with your friends and one of them says something that you disagree with, is your immediate reaction to start yelling and calling them an idiot? No. Well, unless that’s how your friendship with that person works - but if that’s the case, maybe reconsider your friendship...or check out anger management. Alternatively, if someone you’re friends with on Facebook posts something you disagree with and you see people debating about it in the comments, are you more likely to turn on your caps lock and call that person an idiot? I’d argue yes, you are. And if you said “no” - congrats on your sainthood.




The point is:

• Without visible human emotions like facial expression and tone of voice, we forget we’re talking to real people, rather than a machine
• The less empathy we have for people online, the more likely we are to adopt that attitude in our offline lives
• Studies are literally telling us that social media is bad for us, but we’ve grown lazy of having to acknowledge other people’s feelings, so we’re reluctant to leave

Am I Right?

Listen, do I think leaving social media can make you a better person? Yes, I do. But while I can preach about it all I want, I won’t avoid the fact that what I’m saying is hypocritical, considering this is a blog post. What I will say is that maybe by being more self-aware, enough to realize that spending most of our time communicating behind a screen might be affecting our relationships in a negative way, will make us better and more ethical people. Do you think you’ve become less empathetic to people’s feelings because of social media? And do you think spending less time online would rectify that?