The winter is approaching and around campuses of the United States, one quite often hears, "I'm lonely." It is said so often that it's even casual talk now, and everyone seems to accept it with a smile or a brushing reply of, "No you're not! You have me!"
Many millennials find themselves feeling lonely for many reasons, and most of it is due to social media. It seems that only the happiest of photos are uploaded onto our social media accounts, and somehow, a silent competition of who's living the best life becomes an internal investigation.
The comparison problem of "my life versus their lives" is the main catalyst for feelings of loneliness to arise within our generation. Having grown up with technology and being able to keep up with peer's and family's lives through social media, we are compelled to feel that we all have a sense of who's life is like what, and who's life is better than ours.
The "lonely" epidemic is only increasing as the years go by, and the suicide rates among our generation correlate with the consciousness of our generation: no one cares, no one knows, therefore, I am lonely. Different solutions can be proposed to control the use of social media, but we all know that is not where the core of the problem lies. My generation is in need of a reminder: stop comparing yourselves to others.
Although one might say that not comparing ourselves to others is impossible due to the great amount of technology we have, we shouldn't passively accept this. Yes, we have the social media. That's great.
But we don't need to religiously check on it to detect what type of lives our friends and family are portraying, where they are able to go and where we can't afford to go, what they can afford to wear and what we, ourselves, cannot afford to wear, how their love lives are versus ours. This is not a life designed for happiness and contentment with ourselves.
Instead, we should make the use of social media subjective. Upload a photo when we feel like it, turn off the push-notifications, only checking it when we are truly missing someone and want to see how they are doing and say hello.
Inundating ourselves with the silent, internal investigations of, "my life versus their lives," is only going to produce deeper feelings of loneliness. If we passively stay on this comparison frenzy, the "lonely" epidemic won't go away. Put the phone down for a couple of days, take a look around you. Maybe then you'll realize you aren't so lonely after all.
