Social media plays a huge part in today’s society. We constantly check our Twitter, like our peers' Instagram pics and keep up our 100+ Snap streaks going. So what’s wrong with that? We get to stay in touch with friends and loved ones, and maybe even that one who got away (yeah, you’ve creeped before). The problem with social media is we oftentimes develop a false sense of reality. The other issue is the fact that our generation has ditched real, social interactions in exchange for online ones.
Because we enjoy documenting our daily lives on social media, we often miss out on the actual memories in order to get the artsiest picture, funniest snap story and so on. We are so preoccupied with showcasing our lives and making them look good to others that we forget to stop and smell the roses. Instead of enjoying time spent with friends, we are snapping pictures to post to ensure every one of our followers believes we had a great time. Don’t mistake me, I’m sure that there are instances where fun is being had and a picture or video is snapped for the sake of memories, but in most cases the fun is taking the picture or video and getting the 300-plus likes on it.
This leads me to believe that most people these days are often posting online “for likes.” I have had friends who would delete their Instagram or Tweet because it didn’t get as many likes as they believed it should have. Is this what our world has come to? Relying on likes, favorites and other reactions to validate ourselves? Social media has become a competition, a way for people to compete for the title of “social media famous.” What’s ironic about this competition, is that the likes or favorites people are getting are often times from people they don’t even know. So, for our generation to rely on these likes for self-validation is ridiculous.
Not only are we obsessed with making our lives look glamorous to our peers, but we are spending too much time on these social media platforms, resulting in the deterioration of basic social skills. People in the United States check their Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts around 17 times daily. This accounts for once every waking hour, if not more. This fixation of social media has damaged the way our generation interacts with others in real life. We passive-aggressively post tweets to call out our peers without directing mentioning them because what better way to get the message across than a “sub tweet”? We also forgo talking in person when faced with a conflict, because it is so much easier to say what you really want to say behind a screen.
Although I can’t say I’m not guilty of abusing social media the way I have previously stated, being aware of the false reality of social media is important. It is crucial for us millennials to recognize that while social media is a great platform for communication, networking and simply documenting memories, it is not and will never be reality.
