We all have different personas for social media, and we resemble our personas to differing degrees depending on the day or our mood. Either way, everyone puts their best face forward on social media because that’s how our generation measures themselves now.How many likes a picture gets on Instagram or Facebook or how many favorites and retweets on Twitter confirms how we are supposed to feel about ourselves. Or at least that’s how we see it. Everyone wants to look good on social media. That is why all our pictures are of us with friends or going to parties or doing some cool activity. No one is taking pictures of themselves laying on their bed watching Netflix after not having showered for the third day in a row. 
(Side note: No one should be posting pictures of themselves at all. Public selfies are not your friend, people. Save it for Snapchat.)

And this is because we want to look like we are always doing these fun and cool things. If someone looked at my social media pictures and assumed what my entire life was like from there, well, obviously I just bounce from concert to friend’s birthday celebration to going out and apparently doesn’t need much sleep. 

In reality, I spend 80 percent of the time I’m not in class in the aforementioned scenario: in bed, doing homework while watching Netflix, knowing I’ll be wearing a hat tomorrow because, honestly, how important is clean hair? Oh, and let’s not forget about the part where I am constantly dreaming about getting just one night of a full eight hours of sleep.

College is the prime time to wear the social media mask. When we leave, we’re probably just not going to care as much. We’ll start putting up fewer photos, or they’ll be more pictures of scenery and less of our group of friends all doing some stupid pose we thought was hilarious at the time. We will definitely see a significant drop in “sorority squat” and “throw what you know” photos. 

Actually, to be honest, I’ve already started that process, at least on Facebook. I think I last posted pictures on there in December. It’s just too much work for me to put up all the pictures I take and it’s so much easier to pick just one or, if I’m really going crazy, a collage of five to put on Instagram. Reminder, I spend most of my time on my bed… 
At this point, we are all still figuring out who we are as adults so our social media acts as a mask for us to try on while we do. Maybe you are leaning toward wanting to be a punk rock chick so all your statuses are song lyrics and your photos involve a lot of spiked hair and hole-in-the-wall concert photos. Or maybe you think you want to be a hippie, in which case, lots of flower pictures and pictures of you in a hammock or just outside in general, including at Wakarusa.

Social media is helping us figure out who we are in this crucial time in our lives. I can’t yet say whether this is a good or bad thing. On one hand, it makes us a very conceited generation; we hear that all the time. On the other, it is giving us a unique way to play around with how we view ourselves and how others view us that our parents never had. 

I would like to say we should take a break from these social media personas and try to figure ourselves out away from other people’s opinions, but I don’t think any of us would really know how else to grow. With social media, we can look at our high school self and see how much we’ve changed and whether that’s a good or bad thing. Without our masks, I think we would be a little unsure of where to go next. 

I think the thing to do is continue our personas and continue figuring out who we want to be, just try to stop caring what other people will say or think. I have this issue and I know it would be so much easier to not care if people will think I’m weird or judge me for posting one thing or another. It’s definitely difficult, but it will be so much easier for us to become the people we’re meant to be if we focus on we care about in ourselves, not what others care about.