How social media ruined my social life

[Anonymous]

Social media can be a wonderful thing. It introduces you to like-minded people who you'd never meet in real life; people who can relate to you and understand you. But it can also detract you from your real life and subtly take you away from everything that matters in the real world. This is a story of how social media turned me from an outgoing, happy person into an anti-social mess. This is how social media ruined my social life.

The beginning

I was just about to leave school with my social happiness at an all-time high. I'd made some great friends during my last couple of years there who I hoped I would stay in touch with.... then Twitter came along. I had toyed with the idea of getting twitter for a while but a few days after I left school, I bit the bullet and made an account... and I got hooked. I found people with the exact same interests as me who I could follow and chat to and I became so engrossed with this site that over time, I lost sight of what had been around me. All of my friends that I'd just chucked to the wayside so I could prioritise talking to people that I didn't even know. This was the beginning of a slippery slope.

There was no sign of stopping

Time wore on and I was going through my first year at college (not university, the English version of college) and the vast majority of my friends had elected to stay on at school and go to sixth form. So I had to find new friends; I made one or two but because of my reluctance to go out and socialise due to my obsession on social media, they merely became classroom acquaintances as the year went on. Instead of going out to pubs and clubs, I was wasting evenings in group chats that covered a 3000 mile radius and not feeling like I was a full part of it. A couple of my college friends had asked me where I went to hang out and I didn't have an answer. It made me feel lonely and realise that I needed to get my social life back on track but because I hadn't socialised in the real world for ages, I didn't know how.

New Chapters and the ever-increasing loneliness

A couple of years down the line and I was now 19; my friends from school had left for university and it was too late to reform a relationship with them. Friends from college were getting jobs and there I was with nothing.

The three years after leaving school were the lowest points of my life; I felt down, I had no future, I had no real friends to call on. I felt lonelier and lonelier each day and it was all down to my anti-social approach, my neglection of people that mattered so much to me in past years and I knew exactly what had caused it; social media. There I was, typing away to an F1 fan from Northern Ireland who I'd never ever meet up with when I could have been talking to a life-long friend and feeling happier in myself. Social media friendships can be great but honestly, they mean very little in the real world. Sitting at a keyboard or on a phone all day is not good for your health and unless you've got other people to call on around you, it can make you realise just how lonely you are.

So nowadays, I'm 20 and I have a job I love very much but the problem is still the same; I've lost all my real friends and haven't been able to find new ones. I have gone from being a happy, socially fulfilled schoolkid to being a lonely, depressed wreck in the space of four years. I don't know how I'm going to find new ones and if I find a girl that I really love one day, what is she going to think when I tell her I have no friends?

My obsession with social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are to blame for this downturn in social fortunes; 4 years of time staring at screens utterly wasted. It makes me wish social media didn't exist so then we'd have to talk face to face or at least by phone, just some form of proper socialisation. It's made me so out of touch and introverted that I've become a shadow of my former self. I could give up social media now, but then I'd be even further out of social circles. That's the catch 22 with this situation. I now have it all to do.

Anyway, that's my story. I'd love to hear your opinions. I hope that you found this take interesting and enjoyable.

[LoseMyself]

This rings true for many people including my boyfriend and I'm not far from being friendless in reality myself.

I've lost a lot of friends from high school as they all drifted off in their own directions.

I'm making an effort to get involved in social groups on meetup. com where you can find people with common interests in your local area and get together face-to-face

[myTake Owner]

Yeah I've just signed up to that as well. I hope for both of us that we have success on there.

[RedRobin]

Couldn't you just join a club and make a goal to go out at least once a week with someone from the club or your work?

[myTake Owner]

That's what I'm trying to do from now on. The problem is that at work, everyone else is a lot older than me and have families and stuff.