Break Free – Part 2
Social media is the digital version of cigarettes, but cigarette companies wanted your money. Social media companies want something far more valuable...
In Part 1, I gave you some food for thought about how social media robs us of some of the most important aspects of our basic humanity. Now, I want you to consider some compelling reasons to get off social media, or at the very least, rethink how, and how often, you use it.
1. They can’t touch you.
They say in marketing that, “if the product is free, then you are the product.” That means that if you pay nothing, you own nothing. You have no rights to property that you gave nothing to make your own. On social media, everything you do is on their platform, and it is stored on their database.
Have you ever paid Facebook a cent for anything besides the right to play some games? They pay for the platform and the storage, so they own everything in it – from your public photos to your personal messages.
There are companies that store every post made on any social media platform the moment it is posted. If the post is later deleted, even if after 20 seconds, they store that info as well because the deleted posts are usually the juiciest.
As part of most background checks for jobs, schools, and certainly any position of leadership, all of your social media will be scanned. Companies, schools, and political opponents will pay these companies to see everything you did on social media.
Your entire life is recorded. Anything you say can and will be used against you in anything but a court of law.
The moment you leave, they cannot touch you. Stay off for a while and the things you did were old news.
2. They can’t violate you.
I have to work. I have to eat. I have to get up in the morning and brush my teeth. Most of my day is already commandeered by what I have to do.
My free time is my freedom.
It’s the time I can do anything. I can be with my wife and my kids. I can pursue my dreams by building new skills or networking. I can pursue hobbies like writing, art or hiking that have nothing to do with my daily responsibilities, yet enable me to escape myself to new horizons. Even in just sitting somewhere with a cup of coffee, I can take a moment to reflect on the world around me and make sure I’m going in the right direction in life.
They have stolen that.
I say stolen because those who make money from social media pay psychologists millions of dollars to get us addicted. It’s the digital version of cigarettes, but cigarette companies wanted your money. Social media companies want something far more valuable.
They force us to sin by wasting the absolute greatest gift G-d gives us: Time. Time is life. It is the moment to moment opportunity to perform His commandments and feel His Greatness in this world and the Next. It is protection from the greatest sin: Wasting time.
Rabbi Arush says flat out, that a person will have to face judgment in the next world for all the time he wasted on the computer, even if he wasn’t doing anything blatantly wrong.
3. They Cannot Steal Your Spirit
Veteran teachers have all noticed that since social media there has been a huge drop in the creativity and imagination of children – and adults.
Social media takes away our wonder. It takes away our ability to move our necks about 60 degrees upward from the phone and see the Heavens and its fullness. The clouds. The birds. The trees. The fruits. The flowers. You can even be in the middle of a packed city and see most of what existed in the Garden of Eden.
They actively try to take that away.
They douse the fire of imagination within us by denying us all the blessings around us that spark our will to dream, to imagine, to hope, and to overcome the odds and act.
4. They Can’t Steal Your Wife
One in three divorces today are a direct or indirect result of social media. That means one in five couples will split up because of social media.
They only do everything they can to hijack time belonging to your soulmate and force images of other “candidates” in front of your face. Forget the possibility of meeting someone else in some seemingly benign group, or worse…
Nor can we ignore the serious issue of the “dirty side” of social media. If you don’t already understand how such things can absolutely destroy a relationship in no time, make sure to pick up a copy of The Garden of Peace for yourself (or Women's Wisdom-The Garden of Peace for Women) ASAP.
5. They Can’t Prevent Hashem from Being in Your Life
Did you know that when American President Donald Trump mockingly called himself “a god,” he wasn’t far off?
No, he is not G-d. But haven’t we been taught to treat him that way? We are brainwashed to give him the powers of a divine being more than the ancient Egyptians tried to get its citizens to worship pharaoh.
When you blame everything on someone, you are automatically implying that they are the only person who can fix it. Forget the right-wing versus left wing argument for a second, this is not about politics. But if you blame climate change on one man, then you obviously assume he has the power to change nature – something only Hashem can do.
If he is to blame for every small detail in your life, then he is responsible for every small detail of your life. We get taught this by the media and their social media enablers thousands of times a day to the point where it is gospel.
Who is responsible for every small detail of our lives? Hashem. Who made Heaven and earth? Hashem. Who is the only One Who can manage it and everything inside it? Hashem. According to the Rambam, the first Commandment in the Torah is to know that there is a G-d in existence.
That’s the first thing they try to take from you.
6. Enjoy the Great Benefits of Leaving Facebook
These absolute truths are everywhere but somehow you cannot find them on Facebook.
Social media puts the shackles of control, loneliness, ignorance, and atheism on all of us.
Nobody can stand up to these people. Who can go up against a man with $50 billion in his bank account and 1 billion people behind him?
What we can do is get off it. In doing so, you are abandoning everything that Hashem hates and everything that is destroying us – and embracing everything that He loves, which are the things in life that make you happy, healthy, holy, and wise.
G-d will bless you for every moment that you put to greater use.
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