Listen, I’m just as guilty as the rest of us: I love making my life look great on social media. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, I only want to portray my best self. The question is though, is it to create competition? Is it due to feelings of insecurity in my own life? Is it because I secretly want you to be jealous of me? The answer is simple: I have absolutely no idea. Since the dawn of social media time—which wasn’t all that long ago, believe it or not—the millennial generation has devised a platform where nothing goes unseen, unheard or unnoticed. We have collectively invented a society that has made likes, shares and followers a parameter for self-worth and success. The question is, however, is it hurting us? Is it hurting the next generation?
My sister and I are only three and a half years and four grade levels apart. Comparatively, however, our social media experiences have been robustly different. Instagram wasn’t popular when I was in high school, only making its debut my senior year. For my sister’s generation and the ones below hers, though, they’ve grown up with it; and it’s become ingrained in Millennial culture. This is resulting in some concerning, as well as disheartening, side effects.
Those embarrassing photos with frizzy hair, braces and unkempt Hollister t-shirts and distressed jeans that all middle schoolers know and love? They’re vanishing. They don’t exist. Replacing self-trimmed bangs is perfectly curled hair. Replacing brace-face is contoured makeup and perfect eyeliner. The drive to appear perfect on social media is leading to a drive to grow up sooner and faster than ever before. There are no longer embarrassing photos, but instead social media obsessed selfies with good lighting and faux candid ambiances. And I’m just as guilty of it as every one else.
What’s truly off-putting, though, is the lack of privacy the social media generations are faced with.
Those girls that bully you between classes? It used to be escapable. Now, the drama follows our youngest generations home. That photo of your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend? It’s right on Facebook, ready to be viewed and unable to be ignored or unseen. Those friends that hung out together and didn’t invite you? There it is, staring at you with a swipe of your thumb. Every selfie, status or “Hey! Look at the food I just cooked!” is viewed and judged. There is no escaping this world our generation has created and it’s hurting our younger peers. It’s hurting myself.
The question then becomes Why? What generational shift has led to this need to be perfect on social media? Is it just an outlet of insecurity that all previous generations have experienced, ours just online? Or is it a newfound competition that, subconsciously, most of us don’t even realize we’re competing in?
I question this, not just for the sake of the current millennial generation or the younger ones, but for myself as well. As I spend hours of my time scrolling through feeds to find out couples are engaged and having babies or noting my high school or college friends are touring Europe through picturesque landscapes, I want to know why I care so much. Why do any of us care? What is this need to portray our lives on social media in a way that forces us to compete with one another?
If anything, it’s tearing us apart as a society. It’s making ourselves hate one another, as well as ourselves. It’s giving us one more reason to fight with our family, friends and peers. Social media defines nothing. Absolutely nothing. We need to start realizing that.
