I find myself religiously tapping my screen on ever app multiple, if not numerous times a day. I've come up with a routine, which I subconsciously follow every morning, midday and night with some exceptions in between. I'll sit, scroll and double tap the little hearts next to the edited photos until minutes becomes hours and I begin to feel like a toxic waste of life.
It’s too easy to start out with a purpose and wind up finding ourselves drenched in someone else’s life who, quite frankly, is probably extremely insignificant to us. It’s too easy to indulge ourselves in somebody else's business and subconsciously compare ourselves to them.
Now, one thing I must say is major props to the people with marvelous Instagram aesthetics. I have no idea how you do it, but the problem with this is that we focus too hard on the details. In today’s society, it’s so important to get a lot of likes, and so important to make ourselves look good. All of that just so those late night scrollers can look at our feeds and think, Wow, they have an awesome life! but let’s take a step back into reality and take a look at the big picture. What in the world does an Instagram picture have to do with our well being? I mean, c’mon guys, it’s a photo for crying out loud! Why does society focus so much on how good we look? Aren’t we taught not to care about what others think?
This is where things begin to get extremely complicated in various ways.
We’ve all experienced a serious case of FOMO at least once in our short lives, and to those that are unsure what this “FOMO” is, it's otherwise known as fear of missing out. Honestly, it’s really hard not to experience, when all of your friends are posting pictures of themselves at a party, a bar or a crazy concert on Snapchat, when you’re sitting at home with a tub of Nutella and remote control in your hands feeling sorry for yourself.
If social media didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be able to see each other’s every move.and realize that sometimes not being invited to things is kind of OK. The crazy part about Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, etc., is that you can make just about anything look fun. You could be sitting in your living room with two of your best friends, eating popcorn and watching "The Bachelorette," but still lead the world to believe that it’s way more than that with the simple click of a button. Snapchat has crazy sound effects and filters that enhance our looks, turning a normal snap into a FOMO situation in seconds.
In this situation, try putting yourself in their position. Take yourself out of your body and focus on what you think they’re thinking. Think about if you were them and whether or not you’d actually be having as good of a time as they perceive. Or would it just be like every other night?
An unimportant discussion that we tend to have quite frequently with our friends is the constant complaint of who’s liking who’s photos. Some people tend to spend multiple nights upset, because their boyfriend/girlfriend liked someone else's photo. One thing we tend to forget is how easy and meaningless a “like” on a photo really is. I mean, I personally like people’s photos because I like their photos, and while I wouldn’t necessarily go liking someone’s photo that I dislike, it doesn't mean that I liked so-and-so’s photo because I have a thing for them, either.
There are so many things that go wrong in relationships because of dissatisfaction caused by social media. People have silly arguments such as, You don’t post enough for me or You never like my photos. Honestly, some people just don’t take it as seriously as others. What we always forget about is the meaningful times spent with people in person. It’s too easy to lock ourselves in our houses for days, only talking to friends through a screen.
Everything in today’s society is so jaded, because we're so caught up in these things. Social media takes over our life, and it really makes people on the outside looking in question our personal lives, which is a bit unsettling. We're all coming out to be clones of one another with the same cheesy captions, the same flimsy filters and the exact same photos from that concert that everybody else went to. There's a rare amount of originality nowadays.
The truth of the matter is that the amount of “likes” we get doesn’t justify who we are as people. The only thing it justifies is whether or not we take good photos, which isn’t something worth caring about all that much either. Some people don’t need to post on Instagram and Snapchat 24/7 to show that they’re having a good time. Sometimes it’s easier to just live our lives and worry about social media later.
And that’s another thing -- we actually are wired to“worry about social media. So, the next time you ponder over deleting a photo because it didn’t get enough likes (aka your 700 followers’ approval), just remember who you are and why you posted the photo in the first place! Social media absolutely should not justify our senses of self or the way that others view us. We're far too focused on each others' lives and not focused enough on the present. Social media should be used for fun purposes only, not to run our lives on the daily. Just because you didn’t post it on Snapchat doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
