I don't have a phone, and frankly, I don't need one.

My mantra is, 'if someone really wants to talk to you, they would have found a way by now'. Sometimes it's lonely, to see this circle of 'friends', 'classmates', talk about something that you don't know and don't understand because of social media.

I'm not solely an introvert, I'm somewhat of an introverted extrovert: it's not that I'm shy or quiet, on the outside I'm what you'd call confident, a natural leader, a rebel. Yet, if I met a classmate in the mall, I would hide from them, I care, to some extent, of what people say about me but I make it look as if I don't care. Maybe it's me: maybe I'm too stoic, too strict, a 'nerd'. But maybe, it's them: they think that they have a lot of friends, but these 'friends' are the same who talk behind their back, say they support you but don't, make you a worse person.

So, when I went through Instagram one day, through my friend's phone, I saw this new world, this other side of these people I thought I knew: their pouty lips, middle fingers, and short skirts. It seems as if I'm missing out and I just blew up on the inside: what was I missing? Wasn't I cool, in a 'chill' way? Wasn't I fine with all of them? But the most pressing issue for me was: 'why did I care'?

If I'm so 'chill', a rebel, a confident leader, why did I care? Was it my hormones? Was it peer pressure? That was, when I realized the secondhand effects of social media: social media isn't to connect, it's to disconnect. You feel like a sore loser without it, since EVERYONE has Instagram, Facebook and at least Discord. You feel like social media will be that bridge between loneliness and coolness. You feel like all those people on social media are cool, chill, pretty, handsome.

They might be. They might be 'cool'. They might be funny, pretty, cute. Don't compare yourself to them. Think about this, an astronaut in space has no care that you have no social media accounts. Think about this, if you're truly 'cool', you become a magnet to people, they gravitate around you: like the Earth to the Sun. You are the shining light; you don't need to increase a phone's brightness to know that.

You are who you are. Don't overthink, believe people gravitate towards you, you pull people to you, don't follow people who make you uncomfortable with yourself, sad, depressed, grumpy. Don't become the secondhand effect of social media, become who you want to be. Live happy, live free.