Curiosity instead of restriction to deal with “addictive” social media
Social media has become an inevitably important part of our lives that we can be informed what we need like events and career opportunities, while we can't escape from fake news or any frustration and even mental illness due to connecting people too much.
Some people thus advocate restrictions and even bans on social media as they regard it as a kind of addictive, calling for more offline experience which can be more fun and meaningful.
Their approaches make sense, but can’t fix the root cause because we will be vulnerable to social media again.
The problem is that we still regard it as an important tool: we still fear if we miss some of the useful information and never think of any alternatives.
Instead of restricting our uses and identifying it as an evil, we can be staying curious. Here’s why.
Curiosity allows us to understand something. In order to know it more, we need to create a distance or zoom it out to see the whole picture. It is thus neither love nor hate relationship, and we are still conscious of what we are learning and try to ask questions including WHY.
Emotions like love and hate can sometimes make us tend to believe we already know someone or something very well. Being unaware of these feelings, we can become overreactive to most of the things we see on social media.
How about if we understand human nature more through social media? How about if we ask why people believe something that is obviously wrong, instead of complaining social reality? How about if we simply observe rather than involve in or interact with other users?
It’s impossible to totally get rid of social media. The more restriction we impose, the more motivation we will have on checking social media. Although staying curious is not always effective, we will gradually understand more about the fun facts of ourselves, as well as how human natures and social media work. Curiosity drive us from look at it from a distance rather than involve in, so that we can learn to be less vulnerable to social media and enjoy various kinds of offline activities. Not to mention we can no longer rely on social media and have more options in our life.
