As you wind down from a long day, you lay down in your bed and engulf yourself in blankets. You grab your phone off the nearest table, and as the screen's light beams off your face, you type in the password, and check social media before your night has completely ended. You click on the Instagram app and scroll, noting like after like. You see the typical night-out pictures, foodie accounts that make you hangry for the sizzling burger in the picture, celebrities that you follow, and the clear lagoons of Fiji on the latest traveling account that you follow. It's all so enticing, it grabs you in for more almost every night you check into this account.
Next, you click on the Facebook app and scroll and scroll through your feed with endless hilarious memes that describe your life's events, Buzzfeed videos, pictures of family, and updates of statuses - you like status after meme after video.
Snapchat's up next. The app clicks open as the stories line up, one after another, waiting to be clicked on and viewed. The click of a button, it's so easy. It's so easy to show your satisfaction, liking, viewing, and disliking of almost everything because almost everything is at the touch of your fingertips. Before you wind down for bed, you see what your favorite celebrities, family, and friends are up to, and with the slight click of a button, it shows you're still captivated by what they're posting.
What happens when you don't show interest in a status, photograph, or video? What happens when you post an Instagram picture and it reaches less than 100 likes? Wow... this is impossible for some people to handle. What happens when you have less than 200 followers on Instagram? The number of times I've heard, "I'm going to delete this picture if it gets less than xxx amount of likes" or "Oh my god I feel so ugly I've barely gotten likes, go like my picture." It's sad. Social media should never define you or how you see yourself to be in others eyes. It shouldn't make you feel like you're less of a person, nor should it tear down your self-esteem. It shouldn't be a sign of popularity, nor should it be an outlet for you to share your everyday life's events, because, in reality, nobody actually cares what you're doing.
Social media is a place of entertainment. It's a place to share interesting or hilarious moments that occur in your life. It's a place where you can stay updated on loved ones and the world around you. It's not a place where you should look to see how "popular" you may be based on likes. That's childish.
We all fall a little guilty to this social media pleasure of staying updated (I'm not dismissing myself because I fall guilty as well). Thus, remember, a social media account isn't representative of who's truly happy, living in the moment, nor is it insightful to how much worth a person has. Next time you analyze a post, realize it's just a like, follower, and comment. A "like" doesn't define who you are as a person. Don't let social media consume your life, and don't let it overpower your judgment on yourself. Live in the moment, yet share glimpses with your loved ones, not a run-on script of your minute-to-minute activities.
