I sit here writing this article after I've spent at least half an hour procrastinating by scrolling mindlessly through social media. How funny is it that I am writing about comparison when I've just spent so much time comparing my life to the lives that others post online in the form of tweets and Insta photos? Social media is packed with living social resumes—people trying desperately to appear successful and popular like their friends. We are all so eager to present an image of effortless attractiveness, wittiness, and trendiness that we now find ourselves in a constant state of comparison.
Every day, when we absentmindedly peruse social media, we are comparing our lives to others' lives. What's so unfortunate about that fact is that we are very rarely actually getting a glimpse into someone's authentic experience; instead, we are staring at their carefully maintained social resume. We filter our lives and edit our daily experiences before posting them online for our followers to see. In turn, our followers edit their lives before posting them. Rarely do we see an image that was not filtered, or a post that was not edited to add humor or dramatic effect.
Because of this, we are sizing ourselves up against our family and friends every single day. We find ourselves comparing our heavily altered selfies with those of others; we read our own comments and try to judge them based on the comments posted by others. Every "like" counts as one more ego boost, though in reality, we double tap at anything that makes us pause for a moment before scrolling on.
We cannot stop comparing our heavily altered social media presence to those of our friends, and often it leads to an unhealthy obsession with appearing more popular/entertaining/happy. We abandon living life freely and without distraction, and we cling to our devices in the hopes that we can find something to prove that we are just as good as the people we follow. The moment we see something even remotely interesting, we switch from experiencing it with our own eyes to staring at it through an iPhone screen. We scramble to open Snapchat or Instagram to capture the moment, and we lose the chance to live it authentically.
I am not writing this to condemn social media entirely. I am simply tired of watching the people around me battle for likes and commentsThe only way to break the cycle is to see social media for what it is: an unrealistic portrayal of the moments we choose to share with the world.