We live in a society where social media constantly bombards us. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook – everywhere we look, people always post pictures of themselves at parties, with friends, or attending a fancy event.
Whenever we see these photos, we feel a sense of dread. And we ask ourselves, “Why isn’t this my life?”
However, what we don’t realize is that the people who post such pictures may be dealing with their own situations, but they don’t tend to post about them.
While interacting with other people in school, I realized that Instagram represents a false reality for many. The people I noticed who use Instagram the most tend to be the saddest. While scrolling through their feed, many may think that these individuals are living the dream life, when, in reality, they are struggling like the rest of us.
For example, I’ve met some people who do not attend class daily and continuously try not to prioritize academics. When it comes to tests, many of my classmates would struggle. However, in my class, I noticed that the people who tend to struggle the most in school are the ones who are more active on social media.
Through this observation, I asked myself: “Why would these individuals choose to present their lives differently on social media?”
Then, I realized how dangerous social media could be in this manner.
When you want to present your life in a specific way through photos and videos, you curate a feed filled with pictures that only reflect a few moments of your life. These pictures may make you feel content in the moment. But while posting these photos, you can’t stop but wonder about the happiness that lasted. Hence, you begin to live through social media to minimize the other challenges in life. You begin to view your feed as your life.
As a result, it becomes difficult to tackle or take responsibility for the other situations.
Many people fall into this trap, mainly because they believe that social media reflects a person’s life. So, many of us buy into this perception and want to curate the best images for ourselves, just to show them off to others.
But we don’t realize that these photos and feeds are a double-edged sword: The audience viewing them base their judgments on a person’s life from what appears on their feed, and the person posting them is curating a feed based on the life they want to present and live in, not the one they have.
Due to this, many of us don’t know the truth about other people. Are they really living their lives as happy as they say they are? Or do they want to present themselves as happy individuals? The truth is, many of us won’t know what’s going on. So, we can’t assume that their feeds represent their true lives.
Sometimes, people’s social media posts are too good to be true. So, the next time we come across them, we should ask ourselves: “How is our life different from the way we portray it on social media?”
Photo by Erik Lucatero on Unsplash
