As college students, we are constantly surrounded by people who look like they are having the time of their lives. Their Instagrams are always with friends, they are always smiling, and always having fun. They are at every event, bar, party, social, and game, and they would not ever lead you to believe otherwise.
What we fail to remember is that no one Instagrams the huge test they just failed, or how they have been fighting with their significant other, or that they are struggling with money. We get to pick and choose what people see, what filter is layered on top of it, and how we want to crop it to best reflect how our lives appear.
By scrolling through our feeds, we are fooled by the false reality that is Instagram. No one is having a hard time, it's just me, we think to ourselves. We post what is going to make us look good or what is going to get us the most amount of likes.
While the caption might say something like, "Awesome hike through Chewacla! It's such a beautiful day!! #neature #granola," that person may very well have gotten out of the car, walked around for ten minutes, snapped a picture, and left. Someone who Instagrams the cutest picture with their game day date and captions it with, "Wouldn't want to spend a day in Jordan-Hare with anyone else! #wareagle #gamedaydate," might not have said one word to him the whole time. Someone who takes a picture of the "legit study sesh" they just had filled with notebooks upon notebooks, an open laptop, and highlighters and pens of every color, might not have even cracked open a book.
The more likes we get, the more worth we have these days, or so it seems. If it doesn't get at least twenty likes in the next ten minutes, I'm just going to delete it, we tell ourselves. While you might be spending the night at home working on something for class, you can upload a picture of yourself at the frat party you attended with your best friends last week, just to make it look like you are up to something. Instagram allows us to compare ourselves with each other with just a few taps of a screen. It is okay if so-and-so gets more likes than you on a picture, and honestly, no one cares if you do not get above a certain number.
The sooner we start to believe that maybe Instagram is not the best judge of what is going on in our lives, the sooner we can be at peace with a quiet night at home, an afternoon full of homework, and a boring weekend getting caught up on sleep without feeling pressure to upload a picture to show it off.
