It’s true. Social media kills my creative buzz.

I can’t think when someone else is thinking for me.

None of us can and that’s what social media companies are banking on.

I once heard a pastor say it’s hard to hear God when we are filling our mind with so much garbage from the world. It’s similar for creativity. How can we hear our own voice when we are listening to so many others?

Social media is addicting.

It’s hard to get away from. ‘

Trust me, I know. Once you start scrolling it’s as if your brain slips into some sort of lock down, slow down mode. While your brain was once hopping with all kinds of ideas for stories or projects or plans, it’s now slowly grinding through the thoughts and ideas of other people and before long your own thoughts and ideas and plans are being strangled and pulled down. Your brain becomes muddled with all the information floating around in there and you can’t remember what plans you had or story you were going to write or what project you were going to complete.

“I’ll hop on for a few moments” you thought and then you realize two hours have passed and you’ve accomplished nothing. Not only that but then you spend the rest of the day sneaking peeks at the site or app you were on because you can’t stand not knowing what someone said back to you or about you or what they are doing.

Social media feeds off our natural tendency as humans to want to feel apart of something and not feel left out. They know what they are doing, in other words. The more addicted they can get you to that fear of missing out the more they can pull you in to view their ads, their propaganda, their view of the world. We are all slowly being brainwashed and sadly many of us like it.

We like being told how to think and what to believe and that our government and corporate officials want to take care of us. It’s soothing and calming to think others are taking care of us and have our best interest at heart. What a rude awakening when one day we realize they only want to manipulate us into one way of thinking and living by telling us some fact checker deemed our views as “incorrect and wrong.”

George Orwell wrote in his book 1984 (which I think should be required reading for all ages in this day and age):

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

If social media can dismantle your beliefs and tell you what you believe, they can control you so you’ll buy the products of their advertisers and maybe even vote for the people they allow to advertise there. Scary to think about it, isn’t it?

But also scary is that social media can also steal your creativity and leave you hollow and confused inside.

What’s the answer?

The answer is for each of us to decide, but for me my answer is to push social media aside as much as I can so I can hear my own beliefs, my own thoughts and my own creativity.