How Ghosting My Friends Could Be One Of The Best Things I Ever Did
I don’t regret it.
We are living in one of the easiest decades in the world, one-click then you have your food delivered to your house, another click then you can reach your friend, communication never has been easier like this before.
We spent most of our time connecting with other people through our little devices in our hands, holding them everywhere, and forgetting our smartphones could be a nightmare to us.
The fear of missing out
I’m not an exception when it comes to smartphone addiction, like millions of people did, I also have my own social media accounts, especially Instagram because that’s what most of my friends use.
I’m not a famous person, I only have 600 followers with almost 400 followings and most people that I followed are my friends, for me, it’s nice to only follow people that I really care about — at least that’s what I thought.
I’m always afraid when my friend’s hangin’ out and I’m not invited, I’m afraid that I’m missing something by not looking into their stories on Instagram, and the fear of missing out is getting worse everytime, I feel that I need to do something about this.
The first time I realized of my phone’s addiction is when every time I hang out we are busier with our phones rather than having an actual conversation — or just playing online games together.
That’s rather sad than fun, I tried to minimize my phone’s usage, but I realize that's also would be cutting a lot of communications with my friends, but I did it anyway.
People begin to wonder why I’m not replying back — sometimes I reply with a quick and short answer and just put my phone again. I also have stopped hangin’ out with my friends, because I simply didn’t know that they were hangin’ out.
Realizing that I have a lot of time
I always thought that 24 hours was not enough to do things that I wanted to do, that’s what would happen when I hangin’ out too much.
I lived in the countryside and most of my friends live in the city. It took me 2 hours to drive back and forth just to see them, it’s very time-consuming for me.
After disappearing for quite a long time, I tried to reach my friends again and drove the city, we had like 5 to 7 people together, and not a single person having an actual conversation, they were busy playing games.
Now, this became something that I hate, looking back at how much effort that I gave to see them and they were just simply playing games, which you can do anywhere and everywhere, but they chose that moment to play the game.
So I just ghosted them on social media and in real life.
That was a harsh action to ghosting people, but that must be one of the best things that I have ever done in my life, and I’m grateful I was able to do it.
By stopped hangin’ too much with my friends, I’m able to focus on myself, investing most of my time for myself.
Here’s a great video from Joseph Gordon-Levitt about how social media makes you less creative.
Quality over quantity
Following 400 people is not going to build personal relationships with them, social media was built differently, it was built to gain attraction, and I’m not someone that likes having attraction.
Just because you follow 400 people doesn’t mean you’re close to every one of them, we tend to see them as only numbers rather than real people with their own life stories.
We are often too much proud of how many followers we have rather than how many of our follower’s stories that you really know.
Now ghosting your friends doesn’t mean completely forgetting about them, you are simply focusing most of your time on yourself, investing in yourself.
I’m still hangin’ out with my friends, unlike before where I used to hang with 10 people at the same time, I choose my friends now, I would rather spend my time for a great quality time, where I can have an actual conversation and catch up about life.
People that we can talk about the future and ask them for solutions whenever we needed it the most. Time is precious and you can never turn back time, while you have it and able to spend it, you have to make priorities.
