Social Media Demons
Social media is huge in today’s world. Everything you do is online. Everyone has some sort of presence online. Most businesses and people are online. It’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pintrest, Snapchat and whatever else is out there today to make us spend more time online.
We live in and through social media filters. We create the life online much better than the real one. Very few wants to be real on social media. Filters make us beautiful, the skin flawless and the imperfections perfect. We become a distorted version of ourselves.
What’s wrong with social media? Nothing if it’s used the right way and not abused. However, often social media is taken on a level where it’s not fun.
Comparing yourself to others on social media
By comparing yourself on social media to others only make yourself feel bad. Because life of your friend might seem perfect on instagram but nothing is ever perfect. No-one’s life is perfect. We have an image in our heads somebody else has a better life because they go travelling, they published that book, they got that many followers, they got married, they are single, they have children and etc. It’s awful and endless.
The life you compare yourself with is not real. It’s often taken out of context. People tend to get upset seeing others achieve and manifest in something they have been trying to achieve. I have a friend who said “I cried yesterday because someone she knows had achieved something she’s been trying to achieve”. Isn’t it silly to cry over something you don’t know how long this person worked on something to achieve it.
You don’t know how many sacrifices they made to get to that place; you don’t know their journey. By comparing yourself to them you deliberately make yourself miserable because you are comparing yourself to something you don’t know; to something out of context and not the real life. It’s imagination in your own head.
Filters
We often want to show the better side of us in photos. I want to always look good in photos. Before taking a photo I want to make sure I look great. For example, my lipstick is not worn out, my make up is in place, my hair looks good and etc. I look thin enough and etc. It’s hard work to get it all perfect for one shot. We have a new thing called Filters!
With filters you can be in your pyjamas and barely out of bed, put a filter on and you look perfect! I don’t have to worry about my make up and my lipstick. It’s all done for me to make me look pretty. Prettier than I look!! I suddenly become a new me in front of camera. I become a new person and I have a new personality. I become a version of myself. I can embody any person I like. It’s a short lived self proclaimed acting.
Loneliness
Living through social media it can make one lonely. The life one portrays it’s often not the reality. It’s the snippets of life made perfect. It’s taken out the context. Why lonely? Because the person taking photos or videos is someone’s point of view. The only place to share it is social media and not somebody else.
People want to be happy and don’t necessarily want to talk about sad things or what really matters. Because it requires connection, understanding and talking. It’s easier to look good, smile and be pretty. One can be with somebody else or with a group people and can often feel lonely; because maybe deep subjects are not always fun to talk about.
Social media has its demons but it’s not its fault. We, humans, create the demos. We have the choice if we are going to compare ourselves to others or not. The only person you can compare yourself to is the person you were in the past. We have a choice if we feel lonely or not when we are with a group of people.
We have a choice to make what matters to us, talk about it and share it. If we use filters for fun it’s great but if we use filters to mask something then it’s wrong. I love social media and what it does for people. There’s a lot of good things come from social media.
I would like social media keep on being positive and make the world a better place. However, social media on it’s own cannot do that. The people behind social media can. I hope everyone make the most of it and crate magic on social media not the evil. The intention matters. Set the best intentions and live the magic being your true authentic self in life and social media.
After all, everything we do is our choice. We choose who we hang out with, who we are with for the rest of our lives and what we do for the rest of our lives. Social media is there for us to use and make the most it. Let’s make good things out of it and create communities that care about others and make it better.
