YOUR TIME IS BEING STOLEN! (And You're Handing Over the Keys)

Welcome back Vita with Alita family! 

Taking back control from social media platforms can be the most liberating decision we make for our mental health and personal growth. After five years of being social media-free, I share why disconnecting from these addictive platforms has transformed my life for the better.

• Began using social media as a pre-teen against my mother's wishes, eventually expanding to multiple platforms through high school and university

• A shocking screen time report and watching "The Social Dilemma" documentary revealed how these platforms are deliberately designed to be addictive

• Deleted Facebook immediately after learning how it was engineered like a slot machine to keep users hooked

• Social media requires enormous time investment beyond scrolling – photo shoots, caption crafting, and anxiously monitoring engagement

• Research shows frequent social media use correlates with decreased self-esteem, depression, and anxiety, particularly in young users (Paper discussed in this episode: Liu, T.; Cheng, Y.; Luo, Y.; Wang, Z.; Pang, P.C.-I.; Xia, Y.; Lau, Y. The Impact of Social Media on Children’s Mental Health: A Systematic Scoping Review. Healthcare 2024, 12, 2391. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare12232391

• Moderate, supervised social media use can have benefits when supported by family involvement

• Quitting social media doesn't mean disconnection – the people who matter have other ways to reach you

• Your time is your most precious resource – be intentional about who and what you give it to

I am happy we can share this journey of levelling up, together. See you next week! 

- Alita <3 

Chapters

• 0:23 Introduction to Social Media Journey
• 3:20 Discovering The Social Dilemma Documentary
• 8:59 Why I Deleted All Social Media
• 13:58 Social Media's Impact on Mental Health
• 19:55 Time: Your Most Valuable Asset
• 25:31 Research on Children and Social Media
• 29:55 Final Thoughts and Episode Wrap-up

Transcript

Alita: 0:23

What's up? What's up, beautiful people, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Vida with Alita. I'm your host, Alita Gideon, and this week we're diving into the topic of social media. More specifically, we're going to talk about why I quit social media about five years ago and why I am never looking back. So briefly in this episode we're going to, I'm going to give a little backstory about my social media use, why I decided to delete all my social media, and then we're going to dive into a little study about social media and kind of young children slash teens and the point of this episode.

Alita: 1:10

I want to share my thoughts about social media and ultimately, maybe encourage you to decrease your social media use. I know a lot of people depend on social media and some people even use it for their work. I get that, but I'm still allowed to give you my opinion on it, and that's what we're doing here today. All right, so the funny thing is, when I was younger like a pre-teen, whatever my mom actually banned me from having social media and she was doing this as a protective thing. Now I appreciate that, but at the time I was like, oh my God, I can't believe my mom and being the preteen that I was, I went behind her back and I got Instagram. I was posting in secret. I was, like you know, doing things to make sure my mom wouldn't find out that I had Instagram and I was living it up. I was posting beautiful pictures of my nails and stuff and it was a good time. And then one day my younger sister's friend saw me on Instagram and showed my sister, and then my sister told my mom and it was a whole thing. And the point is, after that I continued to have an Instagram account and as I got older and and uh, social media became more prevalent in my life. I also opened a Snapchat, I opened a Facebook, I opened a Twitter, which is now X, whatever. But the point is I was on social media, uh, just like most teenagers are. So, yeah, I was on social media. I was, uh, I was an active social media user as I got older, especially when I started university.

Alita: 3:06

So throughout high school, yes, I had social media. I continued to use it, first, second year, kind of third year, university. But as I got older and as I was looking to, you know I'm on this self-improvement journey. I have been for a while. I think you're always on this journey, you don't kind of end. But at that time I started taking it more seriously, right? So at that time I started taking it more seriously and one day my screen time like when the update came out that screen time could be shown. I think this is when I started to pick up that I was wasting way too much time on my phone and the screen time was absolutely horrifying. I don't remember exactly, but I know, like I remember it being horrifying enough that I knew there was a problem. Okay, so that was kind of the first step of like, okay, I need to dial it back, social media is becoming a little bit too much, but I didn't really do anything about it at the time. I became more aware and cognizant of it, but no real steps were taken at that point.

Alita: 4:19

And then one day, I think, through one of my classes, my TA kind of mentioned a documentary on Netflix called the Social Dilemma, and I was like you know what? It was a random, I think a Friday. I wanted to watch it. I had nothing else to do, so I watched the Social Dilemma. And for those who don't know, the Social Dilemma is a documentary on Netflix. I'm not sure if it's still on netflix, but, um, if if it is, I encourage you to watch it, just to have that information. If not, basically it's just a documentary that talks about.

Alita: 4:57

I think they focus a little more on facebook, about how the goals of facebook were. People who worked for Facebook kind of came and talked and, like different social psychologists and experts, came to talk on the documentary as well about the impact of social media. The main thing here that caught my attention while watching was that they were emphasizing that the goal of Facebook, specifically in this case, was to increase the addictiveness of the app. So you can think about this as like a slot machine at the casino. They were literally optimizing this app to make you want to stay on and not be able to get off, to make you want to stay addicted to being on it.

Alita: 5:44

And I remember so clearly like watching this documentary and being so shocked at what I was hearing that I, literally, on the spot, on the couch, as I was watching this documentary, I deleted my Facebook account. I was, I was done. I was like this is horrible. I deleted my Facebook account right on the spot. Horrible, I deleted my Facebook account right on the spot and the reason for this was a as someone looking to improve herself, like I don't think gambling fits into that image in any way, and not gambling, but I mean like being addicted to something. So let's say you were addicted to gambling or addicted to going to the casino, like that's not the type of life I wanted to lead and that's what I was doing through Facebook, I was letting it, I was being, I was addicted to it and I was letting it kind of run my life. I'm not just putting Facebook down, I'm talking about all social medias, but specifically the social dilemma highlighted Facebook. But, as you can imagine, it kind of applies to other platforms anyway.

Alita: 6:44

The point is I deleted my Facebook right on the spot, right there, and then so a was I didn't want to be this like addicted person to Facebook. And b I had this thought of like why would I let someone do that to me? Why would I let who is Facebook that they get to make me addicted to their app? Like excuse me, my time is valuable, I listen. If you haven't listened to other episodes, you may not know, but I am someone who likes control. I am learning to let go of that a little bit, but it's. I got like, look, it's something, it's just in me. Okay, I like to control the things that I can in my life. So I was like why am I going to let Facebook out here, control my time and control me and control how much I pick up my phone and scroll on their app? Like nuh-uh, I'm going to take my power back. And that was sort of the hour back.

Alita: 7:43

And that was sort of the motivation behind deleting Facebook right on the spot. And this kind of created a domino effect where I started deleting other apps off my phone. So I didn't delete, like my Instagram, snapchat and Twitter like right away. I just deleted the app at first and I would kind of notice like how often was I picking up my phone for no reason? How often was I just opening my phone for no reason? And with those apps deleted, I would open my phone but I had nothing to go to. So after a little while and after watching this documentary, I was like you know what I'm just going to? I'm just going to delete social media. So I just did it. I deleted social media. So I just did it. I deleted social media and that was that. I thought the world was gonna end a little bit. I was, oh my god, like how am I gonna stay connected to all these people, my followers, blah, blah, blah. Then I realized I deleted it and nothing changed this. The earth kept spinning and everybody was living their life. No one died and I am still here today, like five years later. Everything is great. So, yeah, that's my personal story. That's where I kind of that's my history with social media.

Alita: 8:59

I don't want to completely bash social media. Okay, I understand it's a big tool and a big kind of part of our lives today and, like I said, it's a tool that can be used for good. That can be used to, let's say, stay connected with loved ones who live far away. It could even help bring people together, like I've heard so many beautiful stories of people from across the world who come and meet together because of social media. Okay, it can bring information. So I started weightlifting and all those things and it all. My information first came from YouTube and my inspiration came from people posting on social media about their workouts. So I get it. There could be some pros to social media. It's like I keep saying this, me starting my podcast. I'm able to do this because people are putting information out there and it's mainly through social media. So social media is a tool, but I think in today's society, it's a tool, yes, which can be used for good, but it the app. It's so difficult to lose that control where the social media platforms start taking over our lives instead of us controlling how we want to use it.

Alita: 10:35

Another thing I'd like to express is today, even without social media so I deleted all, I don't have any Instagram, facebook, x but even with that, I still find like I have to restrict my screen time, like social media still has a way to creep up on me, like, let's say, youtube. I went on YouTube to watch a few videos about I don't know how to edit a podcast or whatever, and then three hours later I'm watching, like Mr Beast and some random video about nothing related to whatI originally went on YouTube for, and you go down this rabbit hole and like three hours later, you realize you wasted so much time. I still get trapped, I still get, I still fall into that trap. So I can only imagine, if you have it at the palm of your fingers, just think on it, think about it honestly how much time you are spending scrolling, and this is not like a productivity thing where it's like you have to use every single minute of the day or else the day is completely wasted. Yeah, it's nice to be more productive, but just why are you scrolling?

Alita: 11:39

What did you gain from scrolling? What did you gain from sitting there and scrolling mindlessly, not using your brain? Read, do a puzzle, just sit there and stare out the window when you're on the train, for God's sake, just listen to music, like it's just the mindless scrolling. It's honestly not getting you anywhere, absolutely nowhere. It's just distracting and it's it's. It also has a huge impact on your mental health, which you may not even be aware of.

Alita: 12:09

Okay, so to kind of go into that, or to tie in a little bit to some of the drawbacks of social media, people say, yeah, I use social media to get inspired and to cure, to follow people that inspire me. That's great. Like I said, social media is a tool. So if you are utilizing that tool properly, where you are curating your feed to follow mentors or people that you want, that you aspire to be like, or people that actually inspire you, that's great, you're using the tool to benefit you. But I think it's very difficult because the way the apps are designed to only have it for this like positive impact in your life. The app wants you to scroll, it wants you to keep clicking and to engage and to comment and you know, like when people make like those videos on TikTok that make people angry, to increase engagement, like that's that's the goal here. The goal is not to make you better, the goal is to keep you, to keep you staying on the app to watch the ads, to do all these things, like that's the goal here. Okay, that's what you have to keep in mind.

Alita: 13:21

And under that is, people lie and social media allows people to put on this facade, to put on this like this image of themselves, to only post the highlights, to only post when they look good, to only post you know what they want you to see. They're able to create this image and us, as the consumers of this media, we look at this image and we believe it and we think that this is how it is all the time. And the easiest example that I can think of right now is when you follow, let's say, fitness influencers. I'm not putting fitness influencers down here, I'm just saying, as fitness influencers, they are posting, let's say, workout videos and what I eat in a day and all these things yes, to help and to be informative.

Alita: 14:15

But, as the consumer, if all you see is somebody who always looks good and who's always eating right, you're comparing yourself to those highlights and subconsciously you start feeling bad about yourself. Maybe that wasn't the intention of the person, the creator, but I'm just saying, like, subconsciously, you're comparing to yourself. Why can't I always look like that? I don't look like that right now, yeah, but maybe right now you're bloated, maybe right now you just ate, whereas that person didn't show you how they look when that, when they do that, that's people. Yeah, maybe these fitness influencers are not lying, but it's just showing you when they are their best selves and we subconsciously don't take that into account and we're comparing our everyday, every moment self to their best self and it's just not a good combination.

Alita: 15:05

That's another thing I found with social media. Even when I record these podcasts okay, I record them in advance and let's say I was recording a podcast where I was updating you about my life Like I'm recording these in advance, you have no idea what's happening actually, truly in my life. Like I get to choose when I'm posting and what I'm posting and what you're hearing and what I'm sharing. So there's this like illusion type of aspect to social media that we don't all we fall into the trap of comparing ourselves. Although we might know it's an illusion. We might know it's not the real thing, we still because I still do this I still compare myself. It's just hard, it takes a toll on your mental health and it makes you feel like you're not good enough when you're not really there's. It's feel like you're not good enough when you're not really it's not like you're not good enough. You're not always looking your 100% when somebody on social media is portraying themselves as always being 100%. That's where I think the kind of gray area with social media shows Back to screen time.

Alita: 16:18

Time is your most valuable asset. Okay, like you don't treat it lightly. Time is the most. You can never get time back. Time is the most important thing you possess. Your time is more important than anything you possess, and how you spend your time says a lot about you. Do you spend your time on yourself? Do you spend your time with your loved ones and family? Do you spend your time on your priorities? Do you spend your time moving the needle doing something to improve. If you're spending your time aimlessly scrolling, what does that say about you and the respect you have for your time?

Alita: 16:54

Who are these people on social media that they get to rob your time for free? They just get to take it away. For what? For literally no reason. What did they do? How do you just randomly allow these people on social media to take your time? I don't want to blame only you here. Like. These apps were created to be addicted. They were created like. That's why I think TikTok is so addicting. It's like a short video. We have a short attention span and then the next one comes. The next one comes and you get a hit of dopamine. Hit of dopamine, hit of dopamine. It's almost not your fault. Social media is using your physiology against you, but it's. It is your fault If you are aware of this and you're not taking any steps to be better. You're not taking any steps to improve it, to stop it, to prevent it. I'm not saying you have to go and delete social media and that that's the only way I took it to the extreme, but you kind of have to parent yourself here. Okay, you have to. Yeah, you have to parent yourself. You have to set limits and you have to tell yourself when enough is enough.

Alita: 17:55

I deleted social media and the first thing people ask me is but how do you stay connected, like, how do you ensure that you're you know everybody that you want to talk to? Is what? Listen, I have a close knit circle. The people who matter in my life have my number. I have a close-knit circle. The people who matter in my life have my number. The people who matter in my life are able to reach me via email, via number, via whatever. The people who want to connect with me have my number. Like, it's very simple, or they will see me in person. I do listen. I do have WhatsApp. Whatsapp is a social media, but I it's like a messaging app, so I don't really use it. I do have it because I have family overseas, or just if my friends have Androids and I have an iPhone and whatever. We make group chats on WhatsApp. I do have WhatsApp.

Alita: 18:46

Now, recently, I did get LinkedIn. Honestly, the only reason I got LinkedIn is because I'm looking for jobs and everyone I talked to says you need to update your LinkedIn and recruiters on LinkedIn and people looked at LinkedIn and blah, blah, blah. So I'm aware that times are changing and social media is important. So I did get LinkedIn, but I deleted LinkedIn from my home screen and I do not have my notifications enabled for LinkedIn. I only go on LinkedIn when I'm actively applying to jobs, actively job searching, and I have to remind myself to not scroll and to not start looking on people's profiles and looking at all their accomplishments and make myself feel bad about myself. So I still have to have that level of control for myself, even with LinkedIn. Because I did find myself when I made a LinkedIn. I started scrolling and looking at other people and and seeing what people are doing and blah, blah, blah. Then I felt bad about myself Even after posting all my amazing accomplishments on LinkedIn. I felt bad that it wasn't enough and I wasn't doing good and all these things just because I was comparing to all these other people.

Alita: 19:50

People say aren't you scared of like missing out? You're not up to date with the news, you don't know what's going on in the world. I promise you, instagram and Facebook and X are not the only sources of news. I honestly don't. We don't watch the news in my house, if anything. It's just depressing when you put on the news and they just say killing here, shooting there, robbery there. It's just depressing. I'm not for it. I am aware of big things going on in the world. I don't live under a rock, you know. I do still speak to people. I still have family on social media. I still listen to the radio, like I'm not completely just isolated and off the radar. I know what's happening in the world and I know as much as I want to know and if I'm more curious about something that I go actively search it up, and that's how I feel comfortable with that. I get to choose what I want to spend more time learning about. So no, I don't live under a rock. I'm still up to date with all the information out there and I don't have any fear of missing out. I appreciate that past.

Alita: 20:53

Alita, five years ago, made the decision to delete social media and I never went back. I talked about timeless or like aimlessly scrolling on social media. But I think there's another level to the social media that I realize now how much time I was wasting. I'm talking about specifically Instagram here, where I used to post pictures and I remember having like photo shoots with my friends and like spending literally two hours taking photos and making sure I had the right photo at the right angle and the right background, the right lighting and nobody was walking behind me. And then, after spending that two hour photo shoot, I would then go home and look through the 500 photos I took and then narrow it down to the top 10. And then from there, take the top 10, then send it to like five group chats and then take all of their opinions and then go and narrow it down to five and then, from the five, like who was I For what? For my 200 followers to see my photo, for what? You know how much time was spent to take the photos choose the photo, edit the photo, think of a caption and then pick the right time of the day to post the photo to ensure I get the most engagement. And then, once I posted the photo, literally sitting there, refreshing, refreshing, refreshing to see who liked it, who commented. Oh, new message, new DM. What's happening? Who else posted Like? It's so draining For what To gain approval from others so that somebody else can like the photo and comment hard eyes. So I can feel better about myself If nobody commented and nobody liked, or if this photo didn't get as many likes as the previous photo, then what I'm not good enough anymore. Do you see what I'm saying? It wasn't just the aimlessly scrolling, it was just all these other things.

Alita: 22:41

To post a tweet, I would have a draft. I would have like 10 drafts. I would go on notes. I would see what sounded right, what sounded cool, what image was I going for? Do I put an emoji? Do sounded right? What sounded cool? What image was I going for? Do I put an emoji? Do I put no emoji? Do I caps it? Do I not? Do I? It was just like oh my God, and I didn't even. I wasn't even I deleted social media before. Tiktok was a thing. I can't even imagine how addicted I would be with all the TikTok trends and trying all the dances and all those things.

Alita: 23:07

I'm not putting people down who engage in this type of activity. If this is something you enjoy doing and it brings you true pleasure, like, by all means, please, like, go ahead. But I'm just saying, truly, when you think about it, be real with yourself, reflect, is it? Are you doing it to make yourself happy or are you doing it because you feel like you need to uphold this image in society. Are you doing it because, because, like you, need to uphold this image in society? Are you doing it because you feel pressure to do it? And when you do it, how much time are you realistically spending on it? Are you spending on it a reasonable amount of time where I can consider it like a hobby, or is it becoming something that's taking over your life? That's what I want you to think about. Why are we allowing these social media platforms to feed off of our time? Your time, your time is the most precious thing in the entire world. That's why, every time you tune into this podcast, I thank you for your time, because you chose to spend it listening to me instead of all the other things that you could be doing with your time, and that's very I'm very thankful for that. But then you're going ahead and wasting this precious time on apps that are not giving you any value back. If anything, they're just lowering your self-esteem, making you feel worse about yourself after you get off the app. It's just not fair to you. Now.

Alita: 24:28

I didn't intend for this episode to be a rant about social media. Intend for this episode to be a rant about social media. I wanted it to just be a perspective episode where I talk about why I decided to delete social media and why I'll never go back Again. If social media is your thing, it's all the power to you. As long as the power is still with you, don't let these apps take over your life. That's all I'm trying to say. And personally, I had to delete them because I didn't have enough self-control to not let them take over my life. That's the main point here. I was not able. They were pinning my physiology against me and I wasn't able to control it. I wasn't able to put a stop on it. That's all Now, before I like I don't want this episode to just be a rant I did have a paper I wanted to share for this episode.

Alita: 25:27

So this paper is a systematic scoping review. It's pretty cool and it was actually published quite recently, in October of 2024. And this paper, basically? So what is a systematic scoping review? Just for those who don't know, it's a method used to kind of summarize existing studies on a topic, and in this case, studies on a topic, and in this case it's social media use in young children. It helps to kind of clarify concepts. It helps to identify, maybe, gaps within the research. So where have researchers not yet looked? It also helps to determine, like the consensus Okay, like what are we now agreeing on in this field?

Alita: 26:11

This was a systematic scoping review and it's entitled the impact of social media on children's mental health. The children in this case were aged 6 to 13. I know they're young or most of you listening might be older, but I bring it up because social media is so prevalent in our lives that children even younger than this are being exposed today. You can imagine, if you're having these effects at such a young age, what it can do to those people when they're older. And just because this was done in children, it doesn't mean there is no negative impact on social media as we get older. In this study, the age was between 6 to 13, and they looked at literature between the years of 2014 to 2024. So quite a broad range there. So even within those 10 years, you can see how much social media has changed, which is cool, okay.

Alita: 27:10

Essentially, they concluded that different social media platforms can have different effects. What I mean by this is they saw that mostly platforms such as YouTube and Instagram had negative effects, whereas other platforms maybe not so much. It could be that these children are not really engaging in those other platforms due to their age. But the point is here is that Instagram and YouTube did have a negative impact. They saw that frequent social media use was correlated with decreased self-esteem, depression symptoms, anxiety and other mental health challenges. Just think about this for a second. Think of any 6 to 13 year old you may know, and just how frequently using social media is going to affect that person's mental health and their self-esteem. At 6, you shouldn't have self-esteem issues. Okay, you should be a kid playing.

Alita: 28:10

The authors did note that moderate use so this was an important factor actually facilitated social interaction and emotional expression, and moderate use was sort of mitigated in factors such as support from families and schools. So when parents got involved and schools got involved to kind of monitor the use of the social media, we saw some benefits in terms of emotional expression and social interactions in these children. So the type of platform you are using can affect these children so YouTube and Instagram and it can affect them in a negative way. But it doesn't mean use of social media as a whole was bad If it was mitigated with some sort of parental supervision or school support. We actually saw positive benefits where children were better able to express themselves emotionally and have better social interactions.

Alita: 29:09

I think this goes back to what I was saying about pros and cons of social media and how social media is a tool. It's a tool and it is up to the user on how they're going to use it and how they're going to implement it, especially in the case of children. If you know children, care for children, think of having children in the future. It's just something to ponder on and think about how you as a caregiver, as the adult, can play a role in that child's life, especially when it comes to the impacts of social media and how you need to think of maybe you have to parent yourself in that case where you are setting those limits for yourself and parenting yourself to ensure that those negative consequences of social media are limited in your life.

Alita: 29:55

I hope you enjoyed this episode. The study information will be in the show notes, as always. Small recap here. Social media is not the devil. I'm sorry if I made it seem that way. It's just a tool. It's a tool that's available to us and, like all tools, it is up to us how we want to use it and how we're going to let it control or not control our lives.

Alita: 30:19

I hope this episode made you aware, if you weren't already, of some of the benefits or negative effects of social media. I hope my story of deleting social media inspired you to consider reducing your social media use and how deleting social media doesn't make you like I'm living a perfectly fine life and I'm actually enjoying my life so much more without social media. I'm able to better connect with people I am with in that present moment and I still take photos and all those things, but I don't have to curate them for an image. I take the photos from my own memories so that I can cherish them and look at them later. That's all I have for today's episode. I truly, truly appreciate your time listening and please feel free to send me an email, a message, whatever. If there's a specific topic that you enjoyed previously on this podcast, or if there is a topic you're interested in hearing my perspective on, please let me know and thank you for tuning in to another episode of Vida with Alita, and I'll see you next week. Bye-bye, bye.