Being a teen on the internet is more difficult than it seems on the surface. Yes, we are very lucky to have grown up with Google at our hands and smartphones in our pockets, but there's a lot to living online that many adults just don't understand. Between Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Youtube, and many more, there's a lot of unwritten rules to keep track of.
One of the first rules that you learn on social media is that your life has to seem perfect. You have to only post the most flattering pictures of you and your great new friends at a cool new place to guarantee that everyone knows how happy you are. This is most apparent on Instagram. You can log onto Instagram every day to see plenty of beach and Disneyland pictures, but you don't tend to hear about your friend who has cried herself to sleep the past week because she's away at college and misses home.
Another quickly-learned rule is that hashtags are for businesses and adults who don't know how to use social media. Real insta-famous people get famous for their account, not for their hashtags. If you hashtag a photo, the backlash will be fast and intense.
The third rule I learned is that you cannot post twice a day. I've never really understood why this "rule" exists. If I'm having a great day and taking cool pictures, why can't I post all of them?
Moving away from Instagram, Snapchat has its own set of rules. While sad posts and posting twice a day are more regular occurrences, don't even think about posting a video if the sound is crucial to the meaning! People tend to skip through videos regardless, but if sound is required for the video to be funny, the hilarity of your friend singing Frozen karaoke will be lost. Having extremely long Snapchat stories has also been noted to annoy people because they can't be bothered to watch the whole thing, but their thumb is just too tired to keep clicking to skip.
I'm not sure who wrote these rules or why they came into existence. I wish that I could just log on and post what I want, but with every new platform comes something new to get made fun of for. Growing up with technology definitely has its perks, but it comes with a whole new set of rules to follow and new ways to be ridiculed. If all of these rules were given to me in a brochure when I got my first smart phone, I'm sure that 14-year-old me would have greatly appreciated it. The rules pile onto each other, making a good social media presence harder and harder to attain. It seems as though life would be much easier if I used social media for its intended use: keeping up with my friends. Through all the unwritten rules, it's no wonder teens appear to be attached to their phones! I have to analyze everything I see and make sure that I'm within the lines.
P.S. None of these rules apply to celebrities. Shocker.
