Life without social networking

Chances are that, because I can't spam the link to this on people's dashboards/home pages due to my self-inflicted temporary social media ban, no one will read it. Anyway...

I'm 2 weeks and 4 days into my no Facebook or Twitter challenge. I'm not doing it as an exercise of self control or because I hate the internet with a burning passion but instead because it was completely screwing with my brain. After a strange break down, a lot of getting very stressed out and a week of permanent tiredness, I decided that wasting half of my life procrastinating in front of a computer screen reading about other people's equally unexciting lives in the months leading up to my A level exams was a combination that just was not going to work. 

Conclusions from my experiment so far:

Downsides of not using Facebook and Twitter

1. Being out of the loop and not finding out about really important stuff straight away. For example, I didn't find out that JLS had split up until A WHOLE DAY after it happened
2. People forgetting that it is actually possible to communicate in, like, real life. The Facebook tool for creating events is a lifeline now and it's apparently become impossible to let people know what time we're meeting for drinks in real life/via text. Links back to aforementioned point about being a bit out of the loop

Upsides of not using Facebook and Twitter

1.  Being in the loop (a different one). Rather than reading the Twitter feed over breakfast (and lunch and dinner and snacks and in between, too), I've been waking up and reading the BBC news app on my phone. I am now part of a much bigger, much more important loop.
2. Free time. I don't think I realised quite how much time I was wasting refreshing screens and waiting for something exciting to happen (it rarely did). Result of this is that I'm less stressed because I have more time and less tired because I'm actually going to bed a bit earlier.
3. My procrastination has become a little more productive. I now waste my time on more interesting websites.
4. Levels of self-consciousness and worrying have plummeted. It sounds ridiculous but not having to waste subconscious brain energy wondering if I should Tweet something or change my profile picture blah blah blah is so nice.
5. I've been reading actual books again! It's great.

Bex and I started together but she has caved in and therefore I win. Besides a bit of curiosity regarding messages and photos I've not been finding it hard - in fact, in all honesty it's a welcome change and a bit of a relief! 

#fucktechnology

The 21st century is undoubtedly an era flooded by the unstoppable and relentless tide of technology.

As a teenager who only just escaped childhood having actually spent time outdoors on bike rides and playing tag rather than indulging in the behind-a-screen equivalent, I feel pretty lucky. Unfortunately the same can't be said about those children who were born five years later and got their first mobile phone five years earlier. The rate at which the arms and influences of technology are extending is, from my point of view, quite terrifying.

The reality is that technology nowadays infiltrates every single aspect of our lives. The need for real, physical objects is quickly diminishing: CDs, DVDs, books, newspapers, magazines, maps, diaries, proper cameras, pens and paper. There is an app for every need; a digital alternative to every real life pleasure.

The need for face-to-face conversation is apparently diminishing, too. No longer do you base judgement of an individual on their actual personality but instead the parts of themselves which they wish to present. A carefully preened and inaccurate 'profile' advertising a social side, the best angle of a face and the number of friends someone has - or people they once bumped into at a party. Getting to know each other consists of unnatural text conversations, insightful over-thought 140-character snippets of wittiness and flicking through a photo album of parties with people you don't know. The days of a chat over coffee, or even over the phone, seem well and truly lodged in the past. It's sad, isn't it?

The scary part is that there's not a single thing that can be done. Sure, delete the social media, turn off your phone and face the consequence of being out of the loop. Detoxing and distancing yourself from the media revolution is an inviting prospect, but it's daunting, too. I didn't realise how much I use networking websites in the day-to-day: from procrastinating to talking to old friends, sharing my writing and keeping up to date with news, it's almost impossible to imagine a life where no-one found out what was going on in the world until it was printed on paper and you couldn't carry on talking to someone once they'd left. I can't work out if it's a good thing that whilst documentation of the childhoods of generations before might have been limited to a handful of polaroids in a tatty photo album, children of the future will be able to flick back through a catalogue of their parents' terrible hairstyles, even more terrible outfits and irresponsible drunken antics without so much as a second thought.

Growing up today is a generation of self-conscious people, obsessed with finding out what's going on in everyone else's life, permanently preoccupied with letting everyone know how much fun they're having and terrified of being left out of the loop. Sure, the advantages of social media are plentiful: it serves as a diary of thoughts and photos, a tool for organising life, a source of entertainment and a means for communication amongst hundreds of other things. It's just too easy to forget that we did all of these things before it existed, too. This misconception that we rely on social media is one that needs to be clarified. We do not rely on it but instead have chosen to intertwine every aspect of our real lives with our virtual existence. What began as checking Bebo for twenty minutes upon return from school has evolved into a force which now essentially dictates our lives. Every inspiration-void moment is filled by a click of the 'refresh' button. But still, nothing exciting has happened.

The amount of times I absent-mindedly found myself typing "facebook.com" into the address bar whilst writing this is ridiculous. It is one of the reasons my friend and I have decided to stop using Facebook and Twitter for the next two months. I'm intrigued to learn what form my procrastination will take, interested to see which of my hundreds of Facebook 'friends' notice that I'm not actually using it any more and, if I'm honest, quite looking forward to wasting time on websites which might actually teach me something and reading books about love more real than that explored in the statuses of 'heartbroken' 13-year-old girls.

I don’t hate technology, I just hate the role it plays in our lives. I want to meet up for coffee with people instead of talking to them over Facebook chat, buy CDs I can hold rather than songs I double click to play and read newspapers with pages that don’t scroll but fold and turn. Surely I’m not the only one?

The Good Natured, Imagine Dragons @ O2 Academy Bristol, 02/04/2013

As the O2 Academy Bristol fills to capacity with pre-teens, their parents and pretty much everybody in between, a little apprehension that Las Vegas rockers Imagine Dragons might just have their work cut out with this audience begins to surface.

The eardrum blasting commences when a band fronted by a grungy teen sporting a haircut that looks like it involved a bowl, scissors and a pair of unsteady hands takes to the stage. The Good Natured try their hardest to bring energy to a crowd who is quite willing to give it a go but their naïve effort to be infectious and quirky falls short and they end up sounding like a less catchy Alphabeat. It is not the voice of 19-year-old Sarah McIntosh which lets the side down but instead the unbearable attempt at synth-pop noise by which it is accompanied, and after 20 minutes of little substance, irritating dance moves and music which is as in your face as her fringe is in hers, even the drunken 15-year-olds tire of bothering to bob along. The applause fizzles further with every song and the eventual end of the set couldn’t come sooner.

Imagine Dragons dispel any doubts about their ability to work an awkward crowd within five minutes of showing their faces. The quartet kicks things off with anthemic "Round and Round" and the atmosphere peaks as frontman Dan Reynolds cries the words of the chorus. His voice might be squeakier than the recorded album suggests but energetic drum-banging, head-swinging and running on the spot which looks like a bloody good work out more than make up for that: moods are immediately lifted and the result of the collective influence of a happy audience is a smile on every face.

After singing a couple of the less well known tracks to an echo of every word, Reynolds says “I don’t even know how you know who we are:” with a humble astonishment which is almost mirrored in his amazement at the adjustability of the microphone stand. The whole room inhales simultaneously in "Radioactive" and a teasing build-up midway through kills the crowd, working energies to a climax before dropping into the chorus for which Imagine Dragons are most famous, with an enthusiasm that tears through the drum head. "On Top of the World" and "It’s Time" see that any hint of negativity left between the four walls evaporates and the set list concludes with a sing-a-long to a lesser-known track from Night Visions, "Nothing Left to Say." And as an enlightened, optimistic, entirely unpredictable assortment of fans reluctantly accept the end of an exceptional performance, there is little left to say besides the fact that Imagine Dragons aren’t going to be playing mere academies for much longer.

With abundant enthusiasm and an appeal which transcends the barriers of age, genre and stereotypes, Imagine Dragons succeed in engaging a crowd of contrasts and persuading them to become a part of the precious, pure and simple happiness that their music shouts about. In a musical world overrun with pessimists, it's refreshing.

Watch the video for "It's Time" below.