After reading these reviews, I did the same thing I always do when people complain about the adverse effects of social media: I rolled my eyes and proceeded to scroll through Twitter.

Quite frankly, I am a strong believer that social media is only as bad as one makes it. If one allows it to be too prevalent in their life, then of course it’s going to be bad. That goes for everything in life. If one overuses chicken nuggets, then of course the world is going to say that chicken nuggets are horrible and should be regulated.

Now of course, there are those people who choose to overuse social media and said people must be addressed. However, not everyone is like this. Punishing everyone and making us all seem like social media addicts is absurd. Even so, some of these addicts see that there is a problem and proceed to try and fix it. My boyfriend only uses Snapchat and he rarely ever posts anything. Before we were dating, he had an Instagram and Twitter and his followers scaled into the thousands. He would post constantly and since he is a rather attractive male (I’m not just saying this because he’s my boyfriend, I swear), he would have fans commenting under his pictures almost ready to start a war over him. He realized that the situation was getting out of hand and decided to delete everything. He created a Snapchat, but never gave it to anyone except people that he knew personally. He could see that social media was inflating his ego and that that truly was not the way it was intended to be.

In a complex social society like college, it is easy to get wrapped up in being social, both url and irl (that is, both online and in reality). I personally have a problem with wanting to visit and stay in my friend’s dorm rooms rather than stay in my own room and study. Being social is a part of the human experience. However, it is incredibly important to remember that there is a fine line between simply being involved in the social scene and being too wrapped up in it.

I truly think it is unnecessary to put so much emphasis on how social media is negatively affecting our society. Sure, there are moments when social media should not be used (it’s probably not appropriate to Snapchat at an uncle’s funeral). However, it is a part of our society that we must embrace and learn that it’s not overriding who we are. It’s simply another characteristic of our complex society.