Whenever I’m alone, I’m usually glued to my phone, scrolling through social media. No one has ever told me to stop paying attention to it, though. I do think it’s rude to be on the phone all the time when I’m with family or friends. I wouldn’t like it if someone did that to me.

Not long ago, I started having trouble sleeping. Why? Because I couldn’t stop checking things online. I have FOMO. I’m addicted to social media.

I’m constantly reading my Twitter timeline. I feel like I have to read every single tweet. What’s the benefit of that? Honestly, I have no idea. It doesn’t affect my work because I’m good at multitasking. But at night, I just don’t want to put my phone down. After Twitter, I move to Facebook, then Instagram. Then I think, “Oh, it’s been 10 minutes. There must be new tweets.” And the loop starts again. The next thing I know, it’s 2 a.m.

And yes, the first thing I do when I wake up is check social media. LOL.

I joined Twitter because I wanted to follow famous people I like. Then random people started following me. It made me feel good. I felt noticed. I don’t even know why they follow me because I barely tweet anything useful. Most of the time, I just rant. Sometimes I even try to get attention. I want more followers. I care about the numbers going up or down. I never “like” my own posts, though. That’s my limit. Haha.

One day, I asked myself, why do I care so much about how many people follow me? People can easily use my words against me if I say something stupid. I want to protect my privacy. I want to share my thoughts without getting into trouble.

There were so many times when I wrote a long Facebook status just to complain about something. I would post it, then delete it once I felt better. I just needed to get it off my chest. I don’t want those emotional posts coming back to haunt me years later. I want to let things go.

Now I see social media as my online diary. Twitter is for ranting. But this week, I deleted a lot of followers. I used to think having more followers would make me feel better about myself. Turns out, being able to post without worrying about who’s watching or whether people will like it makes me much happier.

And that’s my confession.