In the age of social media, barely anything is private anymore. The details of our lives are posted online for the world to see — and we post these details happily. We want everyone to acknowledge us. We want the likes and the comments, the views and the shares. We crave the attention. We create accounts on all social media platforms available, sharing different things about ourselves on each one, and then sometimes we even create multiple accounts on single platforms. We post what we look like and what we like to do and where we go and who/what we see and the food that we eat, all so that we can be noticed.
This doesn’t only take place online, though. While being seen on the internet is greatly sought after, so is being seen in person. We want to be surrounded by friends who laugh at our jokes and praise our achievements. We hope that our teachers recognize our hard work, that our bosses see the effort we’re putting in. We wear stylish clothing and put on makeup and do our hair to look nice and get others to look at us. We do anything in order to not be alone but to be engulfed in attention.
Is this good or bad? Well, it depends on how you look at it. Wanting to be appreciated is completely normal. We want to share our lives with those around us, and it’s no crime to desire compliments or congratulations. As long as we stay humble about our accomplishments, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to tell others about our good news. If we feel great about how we look one day, we shouldn’t be afraid to post a selfie! Doing things to get noticed or wanting to be noticed for what we’ve done doesn’t need to be regarded negatively.
As with most things in life, however, we should seek attention in moderation and think about our audiences. Post a selfie once in awhile, but not everyday; we get it, you’re attractive, but we don’t need to see a close-up of your face every time we log onto Instagram. Try to talk about your good grade with a friend who also got a good grade, not the one who earned a C. Tweet about how you’re feeling, but don’t be surprised if you don’t get a lot of favorites when you just complain and complain and complain. We need to find a balance between sharing and shoving in others’ faces, and between aiming to be acknowledged and trying way too hard.
The growing popularity of having private social media accounts in addition to public accounts makes it a lot easier to not annoy everyone. On public accounts, people post their highlight reels — the photos that they look the best in and the coolest places they go to. On private accounts, though, people post whatever they want. In a sense, a private account is like a diary. You don’t worry about a photo being of good quality or your caption being perfect, you just share what you want to share and know that the people who follow your account want to see your life’s details and don’t care about if you post too much.
We all want to be noticed, and there’s no shame in that. Life would be boring if everyone kept completely to themselves. The goal is just to not piss off everyone we know.
