{"id":1607,"date":"2018-03-11T17:28:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-11T15:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/new-edge-magazine\/wordpress-ne1\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2018-05-06T13:09:17","modified_gmt":"2018-05-06T11:09:17","slug":"whats-your-number","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/whats-your-number\/","title":{"rendered":"WHAT\u2019S YOUR NUMBER?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social media has become a big part of my life and I\u2019ll be the first to call myself out on it and openly admit it. I\u2019m not ashamed of it \u2013 why would I be? It has helped me to stay in touch with one of my closest friends as she moved across the world from me; it\u2019s given me countless of opportunities to express myself, it\u2019s brought some amazing people into my life. But I still consider myself \u2018healthy\u2019 in the realm of social media; while yes I\u2019ll sometimes mindlessly scroll through my newsfeed whilst waiting for my train to reach the station or a class to start, I can also go without it and not feel the \u2018withdrawal\u2019 symptoms some experience when being \u2018cut off from the world\u2019. But are you really cutting yourself off? Or are you merely shutting the door behind you and stepping out for some fresh air while your eyes capture the sunset – instead of your camera?<\/span><\/p>\n

In this day and age, with technology running the world, everything is greatly impacted by social media, to the point where deleting your social media apps from your phone or other electronic device can easily be perceived as an act of self-love, extracting yourself from what\u2019s captured on a couple inch screen and distracting yourself with simply being. <\/span><\/p>\n

The social media world, it\u2019s a trap \u2013 if you let it be one. If you don\u2019t swim against the current of its rules, it\u2019s far too easy to tangle yourself up in a cyber cycle where emotions and feelings are reduced to pixels and bytes and everything is fast and faster; the speedier the internet connection, the fresher the news. With everything just a click or a swipe away, it\u2019s easy to become accustomed to the \u2018art of fast\u2019: fast news delivering forth the fast fashion and the latest scoop on how to upgrade your life. As if life were an app downloaded on your phone. <\/span><\/p>\n

Numbers aren\u2019t just a matter of stocks and Wall Street anymore; instead they\u2019ve taken over the lives of many. I\u2019ve had people tell me that they couldn\u2019t score certain deals because their following wasn\u2019t high enough and they didn\u2019t want to cave into the taboo trend of \u2018buying followers\u2019 (which yes, it\u2019s a thing, if you haven\u2019t heard of it yet and yes, it is as dumb and bizarre as it sounds). In other instances my friends had to list down their social media handles when applying for jobs, with the question unsaid but hanging in the air: what\u2019s your number?<\/span><\/p>\n

I once went out with a guy who\u2019d told me, completely shamelessly, that if he posts a picture on Facebook and it doesn\u2019t get more than 20 likes in a certain amount of time, he\u2019ll delete it, always. \u00a0\u201cWhat\u2019s the most likes you\u2019ve ever gotten on your profile picture?\u201d he asked me whilst fishing his phone out of his pocket to open the app and show me his. He then proceeded to huff about how he doesn\u2019t have nearly enough Instagram followers. I left him on the doorstep of my friend\u2019s building that night, knowing that I could never be with someone who was so blatantly obsessed with numbers. Economists excluded. <\/span><\/p>\n

It got me thinking; have we really reduced ourselves to likes and comments? Are we, as a society, so obsessed with fast things that relationships end before they can even begin? Have we found ourselves in a real life glitch we can\u2019t get out of?<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard people say that if you\u2019re not online nowadays, it\u2019s as if you don\u2019t exist. But they\u2019re wrong; the living, the breathing, the existing starts beyond our screens. And while I won\u2019t be deleting my social media anytime soon because receiving a snap from a friend in New York enjoying a concert and then afterwards telling me all about it is far too precious to me, I\u2019m not saying no to every now and then taking a step back from it all. And looking around me to see what I\u2019ll find, so I can make some memories and tell her all about it when I come back.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\/<\/span><\/p>\n

Text: Maja Podojster\u0161ek<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social media has become a big part of my life and I\u2019ll be the first to call myself out on it and openly admit it. I\u2019m not ashamed of it \u2013 why would I be? It has helped me to stay in touch with one of my closest friends as she moved across the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2054,"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions\/2054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newedgemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}