Let
me explain, a couple of months ago Essena O'Neill had an internet melt down,
from what I understood her melt down was due to the fact that she felt she was
a hoax on social media. Although I don't completely agree with everything she's
doing or saying–that could quite possibly be an entirely different post
because, well, I'm opinionated– she did remind me of something very
important; Not everything on social media is real.
I'm
going to go ahead and say what very few people like to admit on social media–life
can suck. Every single person on this Earth is going through something– whether
their social media account shows it or not. Very few people live the
lives they post about on social media. Can you imagine if people actually
posted about every aspect of their lives? It wouldn't be very interesting to
look at, because let's face it, we aren't constantly doing
something interesting.
As
a struggling college student I can confirm that life isn’t always great. Most people
I follow on social media are also college students and we all know how sad it
is to be a college student in the U.S –aka expensive. If we were keeping
it real on social media then those neatly centered, vibrantly filtered
Instagram posts of food or elaborate shots of your latte last Tuesday would
turn into pictures of cup of noodles for dinner or you crying next to a book
which you have to write a 15-page essay on by 8 am the next day. It's real
life.
I
realize that we all lead different lives and there is definitely a handful of
people on social media that maybe do live the life they post about but even
your favorite blogger or fashion icon has to take time out of their glamorous
lifestyle to do something very typical and boring. Life is just not always
interesting or cool or aesthetically pleasing.
A
couple months ago I found myself feeling a little down– when I say this I mean
that life was not going well and I was sad– and I'd log into <insert any
social media site here> and I'd log off feeling a little worse because I saw
posts of people having a good time with friends or people on vacation or
someone in their happy relationship. I don't think I'm alone when I say
sometimes you go through sad phases and going online makes it worse. When you're already feeling
down seeing these posts on Instagram, or any social media site, from real
people make it seem like you, in your sweatpants, on a Friday night is socially
unacceptable. It makes you feel like everyone is doing better in life than you.
Negativity fills your thoughts even if it’s temporarily.
This is what I mean when I
say social media is a weapon. It can destroy you. Social media should not be making you
feel sad or anything negative as a matter of fact. If
you feel miserable after scrolling through your feed you're forgetting that you
don't have to be doing what everyone else is doing. Even if you do want to do what everyone else is
doing but can't for whatever reasons remember that everyone is at different
stages in life, everyone is experiencing different things! You will get
where you want to be in life at your own pace.
It's so easy to use social
media to compare ourselves to everyone else, I know that from firsthand
experience. Social media can and should be used to create a wave of positivity
into our lives. Grab inspiration from what others are posting and let it motivate you to improve you and your life. Don't let something as stupid as social media make you miserable.
There's a phrase I once
heard that I feel defines our generation, "If you don't post it online,
did it really happen?". We as a generation feel that in order to live
life to the fullest we have to document every aspect of it but let's be real,
not every moment of life looks pretty on our feed and that's okay. No, but
seriously, there is so much more to life than pictures of nights out and
coffee. All the ups and downs of life can not be documented on an aesthetically
pleasing feed. I’m not hating on social media at all. I love it. I support all the
posts featuring coffee, nights out, selfies and hauls. I just think that we
need to use social media with caution in order for it to not affect us negatively.
Ultimately, don't expect me
to to start captioning my pictures with all the sad things that are actually
happening or posting a video of me crying because life sucks. I most definitely don't expect that from anyone else either. I don't
think that social media should be more authentic. Life is way too
dynamic for our posts to be completely genuine.
Just don’t get caught up in
all the facades.
Diana x
Diana x
