A good friend of mine said to me recently, "At the worst point in my life, I began to play into the things everyone told me I was, so much so that I forgot who I actually was. I lost myself." Heading into 2017, this is the issue that plenty of teens and young adults are facing. The culprit? Social media.
What is the first thing you do in the morning? Pull out your phone, right? This is what I do. I check Instagram almost everyday, checking to see who liked my picture, who didn't like my picture, how many likes and comments I got, and what I missed overnight. I check Facebook, seeing what my mom tagged me in, what my friends said about my last Odyssey article, and who has done things with and without me. I check twitter, seeing if anyone found my last few nuggets of wisdom funny or relatable and look to see who else has said things that are funnier than my anecdotes, tactfully retweeting 140 characters or less from the people I want to get to know better, showing them that, yes, I do exist. Finally, I check Pinterest if I'm unbelievably bored, repinning recipes from my mom and cute outfits I'll never be able to afford from my friends. If I have snapchats from my little cousin or best friend, I reply and then roll out of bed. If I saw a particularly cute outfit on Pinterest, I try to recreate it from the items in my closet. If I saw a tweet from someone saying that they'll be in the same place I will be later that day, I'm more careful with my eyeliner. If I know I'm going to be posting pictures from the day on Instagram later that afternoon, I wear that one jacket that everyone has told me I look thinner in. And if, because snapchat told me the boy I like was out with another girl the day before, I put on boots instead of converse and try to walk with a little more swagger than I usually do when I pass him on the sidewalk.
Social media is ruining our self-esteem, one "like", "selfie", and "snap" at a time.
According to leading researchers in Identity Theory, those who have an already low self-esteem are more eager to disclose information because those with low self-esteem engage in identity performance and require affirmation and feedback to convince themselves they are necessary and loved. We post pictures, write statuses, and compose tweets hoping to get a response, a reaction, some form of attention. And where is it getting us? Absolutely nowhere.
While more and more teens and young adults are seeking out online approval, cyberbullying and suicide rates are steadily rising. According to the New York Times, suicide rates are at an all time high in the last thirty years. The amount of girls aged 10-14 that have committed suicide tripled this year. Why are such young kids convinced that death is the answer when they have barely lived any life? And why is hardly talking about the part that cyberbullying and social media plays in the issue? Several of my good friends have said, "sayonara!" to social media this year with these questions on their minds, knowing social media was wrecking their emotional health and slowly killing their self-esteem little by little every single day.
With 2017 arriving oh so soon, everyone will be making New Years Resolutions. What if your resolution wasn't "eat healthier" or "work out more" (although these are fantastic goals to set) and was instead to give up social media? Maybe if even just for the month of January, you deleted your social media apps, set down your phone, and actually engaged in real-life relationships instead of wearing a phony facade that the internet has convinced you you must wear to be "cool"? I think you'd find that those insecurities that you've been convinced to buy into would fade away. Who knows? Maybe you will even find that person you lost long ago: yourself.
