Everybody loves a good selfie. However, society has come to measure self-esteem by how many likes it gets. Twitter statuses and Facebook profiles allow people to create fabricated stories about lives not actually lived. I’ve been guilty of it myself at times; wanting to display my perfect life and my perfect family and the perfect job for my perfect followers to ogle and gawk at in an effort to make myself feel a little bit better about the way my life may be a certain time.
And with all these stories being strung and spun it could really leave someone feeling a bit uneasy. When’s the last time you spent an enormous amount of time on social media and felt better about yourself afterward? Not too much, I suppose.
For women particularly, after we spend hours gazing at other people’s lives we feel like we’re not enough – not pretty enough, skinny enough, happy enough. We wish we had more money, a better boyfriend or husband, or that our kids were smarter or better behaved.
It just leaves us with a depressive and nonchalance emotion about living and life.
I’m not against social media or what it's allowed us to do in the past few years however it is both a blessing a curse.
We’re too busy stalking other people’s memories instead of making some of our own. We get caught up in friends’ festivities and wonder why we weren’t invited. We listen to that voice that tells us we should be “this” and we should do “that”. We waste our time gazing at other people’s happy while ours is being snatched from us.
Yes, I’m a girl who experienced it myself.
True, excessive social media usage contributes to depressive-like symptoms in both male and females.
True, social media is a good avenue to connect with friends and family near and far.
True, the unhealthy use of social media is a silent outcry to fill a gap within us that no matter how many “likes” or “follows” we get it won’t make us whole.
Only God can do that. God stands in between the gap of our less than and not enough. And bids us to trust and believe Him to fill and flood our holes with love and truth of who He is and who we are until we’re made whole.
