Saying no to social media?

I have a fair amount of friends that I would take the liberty of calling "hipsters"!  Now, I am aware that there is probably a definition of a "hipster"  that has been universally agreed upon, but since I am unaware of this definition or what forum would have been appointed to make the distinction on what is and what is not a "hipster"  -I have taken the liberty of deciding that these people are, in fact "hipsters"!

I just had to get this of my chest before getting into the actual topic that I would like to discuss!

About a year ago these hipster friends of mine began taking about taking time of social media. They wanted to get out of the time consuming, intellect killing social media frenzy, and kill of bad habits of stalking others on social media, and feeding their own insecurity by seeing how awesome everyone else was.

Not long after this I began seeing the status updates on facebook, twitter, Instagram etc. "This is my last post", "Not sure if I am coming back to this forum again!" etc.  they were in fact abandoning these social media platforms, and beginning to make their way back to spiritual serenity, and a daily routine that did not include hours on end navigating through different social media platforms in order to see what everyone else was doing!

I have to admit that at first I was impressed, intrigued, and began nurturing thoughts of potentially travelling down the same path! I have to agree that some days after visiting facebook, twitter, Instagram etc.I have found that I was intellectually numb after getting back to reality.  Not that I have too much of an intellect to start with, so I figured that I had to look after whatever little I had left!
So the first thought that came to mind was a realization that I would probably spend more time in the future visiting regular news sites, and reading papers - just the way I did before I was sucked into the social media vacuum. I also realized that the news reported in these conventional media are more often than not, very depressing!  Not very often do I find stories about human compassion, about people helping each other out, fund raisers and charities, long lost friends who find each other again, tear-jerkers that help restore faith in the human race etc.
I realized that if I were to abandon social media I would be left with news of human disaster, deceit,  revelations of politicians and celebrities that I could not care less for about! I would basically become depressed with where the world was going, and before long I would probably begin advocating to my family that we go live in the mountains, and prepare for the impending doom!

After this the choice was pretty easy!  I am staying on social media!  

The thing with social media is that it requires a certain amount of self discipline!  You have to set up parameters and guidelines for how you use them.  How long time do you spend on these medias?  How often are you there?  Are  you always on-line checking every status update that is pushed your way?  If you have not set up these parameters for yourself, then social media will consume your time, and a "cleansing" period may be a good idea - but make sure that you check yourself during this period of time - you could be the reason social media is not working for you!

For my own part - I'm staying and enjoying that there is a place where the success stories and feel-good stories have just as much space as the disaster journalism that has become predominant in conventional media!  But I am staying on my terms!  So I guess it is safe to say that I am not a hipster:-)

Are you staying or going?

Food for thought - If I take a pen and jam it in my eye - is the problem really the pen?