What if our lives weren't so influenced by social media? What if we thought for ourselves and focused on our own lives instead of reading into the lives of other people? The problem with our generation is that we're always so engulfed in other peoples lives by scrolling endlessly through Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, just to name a few. We're not always conscious of it, but we are constantly comparing ourselves to other people.
1. Realize that people choose to only show the world the best of themselves.
Scrolling through our Instagram feeds can make us feel inferior. We see these images of people who seem to have the perfect body, amazing friends and who seem to boast about how swimmingly their life is going through pictures. What we don't realize is that most of the time these pictures are just for show. The picture of a girl running around in her bikini was most likely pulled from a pool of 100 other pictures. It's highly unlikely that there was only one picture taken of her, but instead she chose to post the picture she looked best in. Now I'm not pointing fingers, because I've done the same thing myself, and it's not realistic that a person posts just any picture on hand. We, as humans so caught up in social media, want the world to think highly of us and to think we live a happy, perfect life with a picture perfect body when in reality, we all have flaws. People only show the best of themselves.
2. You will never be anyone but yourself.
It's so easy to find ourselves comparing ourselves to other people. Saying "I wish I looked like that person," is something that's uttered quite too often these days. Like I stated before, people only post the best pictures of themselves and want the world to see them as the beautiful person at their best angle. But it's so common to forget that we will never look like another person. Unless you want to undergo plastic surgery to alter your appearance, it's very crushing to our self-esteem to desire to look like another person simply because it isn't possible.
3. Put down the phone and enjoy your life.
It's always nice to share pictures of your vacation, your hike, your time with family, etc with your friends and social media followers. But when it becomes a habit and a priority, that's when it's taken too far. Enjoy your life, live in the moment. Don't worry about what other people are doing. Don't worry about how you have to share every single moment on social media. Don't think you have to appear a certain way to impress other people. And most importantly, don't feel the need to dabble in other peoples lives and be jealous of all the things they seem to be doing. You have one life to live so don't waste time being so caught up in other peoples business.
Social media should be used for the purpose of sharing things with friends, family and acquaintances. It can be used to share ideas, art, pictures and everything under the sun. But remember that social media is not reality. People are not always as happy as they appear. They don't always have the perfect life or the perfect body. So instead of focusing so much on what other people are doing, focus on yourself and the people that you love and put reality before social media.
