I remember the day well. It was a good day. In fact, it seemed like it was about to be a fantastic day. I rolled over, reached for my phone, and went straight to Snapchat. Quickly I noticed, and the panic set in. It was gone. The “Top 3” feature was gone. And just like that, Snapchat made fidelity cheaper than a 30-day free trial.
It’s amazing, really. The power a small, intangible “thing” can have on your life. With social media becoming more common than teen pregnancy, and a vast array of sites to add, like, or double-tap, personal contact has gone out like cargo shorts; and with it went our relationships. So what is the deal? Why has our generation placed their love in a like?
In the words of Kacey Musgraves, “Most of us have cheated; the rest of us have tried.” I think Facebook messaging is where it started. In an article featured on HG.org, we get a better look at just how much damage Facebook has done. Author Lynn Poster-Zimmerman writes, “As one attorney told MSNBC, nearly 60 percent of his divorce cases in the last year exclusively dealt with Facebook issues." It gets worse. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers report that more than 80 percent of divorce attorneys have seen a significant increase in cases involving social media disputes in the last year. A website is now one of America’s biggest home wreckers.
Then, came the art of “sliding into yo DMs.” While catchy and oddly clever, it’s time for the sliding to get shot down. Online doesn’t mean anonymous. And relationship means monogamous. If you aren’t sliding into bae’s DMs to tell her how good lookin’ she is, or you aren’t retweeting her latest witty post, you shouldn’t be doing it. I’m not calling for your significant other to be your only social media friend; I’m calling for our generation to realize that they are defining their integrity by the 140-character message they send to @flavor_of_the_week.
But just to make overbearing girlfriends a little worse, Instagram gave us the “Following” section; so that you could see each time your man liked a photo of one of the infamous TFM girls. And, then, Snapchat went the extra mile yet again, and added those little emojis that no one understands. But, we know one thing, the smirk face isn’t good.
The point of this article isn’t to tell you the various ways social media can help you get your Hefner on; it’s to bring your attention to how ridiculous our generation is. We define love by a “like.” We define our worth by the amount of double-taps we get on Instagram. We download apps to help us increase our likes, followers, and popularity. We started as a generation that had the potential to change the world, and now all we seem to do is change our profile picture.
Don’t dump the social media. In many aspects, these websites can benefit people around the world. But don’t put more stock in them than they deserve. While a profile page represents a person, don’t mistake it for one. So get off your feed, and grab bae by the hand. It’s time we brought back emoji-less emotions.
