Social Media Envy

What we’re really jealous of and what to do about it

Brooke Landberg
Aug 8, 2017 · 4 min read

The other day I got super jealous looking at a photo on facebook.

In the photo, a girl I went to high school with is standing on a dock carrying her baby in a chum pail. She’s wearing a striped shirt and white capris. Her baby is wearing adult sunglasses — presumably hers. They are both smiling big happy smiles.

Left unexamined, I might have let my experience of jealousy make me believe that I, too, wanted to wear nautical clothing, or hang out on docks, or have a baby. If I took this feeling at face value, I might have impulsively pressured my husband into moving up our baby-making timeline, or unconsciously purchased a new sweater from j.crew.

Left unchecked, I might have tried to fix my unpleasant feeling by mimicking my former friend’s life circumstances.

When we have social media envy, we think we’re jealous of the way the other person looks, the people they’re with, the things they have. But really we’re jealous of the way we imagine they feel.

When we have social media envy, we mistakenly believe the person we’re jealous of is having a better experience of life than we are.

Of course, it is impossible for me to know if she’s ecstatically happy. I am not in that woman’s head or heart. I have no way of knowing how she actually feels, no matter how empathetic or good at reading faces I may be.

Now let’s assume that I am so good at reading faces that I’m right to assess her as ecstatically happy in that photo. I hear this cure for social media envy all the time: “You’re only seeing the happy pictures! You don’t know what she’s feeling the rest of the time.” I beg to differ. I know exactly what she’s feeling the rest of the time: she’s feeling everything from angry to zen. She’s experiencing the entire range of human emotion, because that’s what it is to be human. No one is exempt from that, no matter how cute their baby-in-a-bucket photos are.

The woman in that photo is not always ecstatically happy. Sometimes she feels insecure, bored, and miserable, just like me. Sometimes I feel ecstatically happy, just like her. From day to day, mood to mood, moment to moment, both our experiences are constantly changing.

My jealous feelings say more about my experience in the moment than they do hers.

When I’m feeling happy, nothing anyone posts on social media could make me feel jealous. In those moments, everyone else’s happy-looking posts look beautiful, inspiring, and touching. I feel truly happy for them in those moments.

When I’m in a not-so-happy mood, it seems like everything makes me jealous. It’s almost like I check the feeds in order to have an outlet for my jealousy — like the jealousy came first or something. (It did.)

Our experience of life comes from the inside out, not the outside in. Buckets, babies, and boats don’t make you happy. Only happy thoughts can do that. And your social media feed — contrary to what everyone else seems to say on the subject nowadays— cannot make you unhappy. Only unhappy thoughts can do that.

If social media envy is a product of an unhappy mood, what do we do about it then? In my experience, seeing that our experience of life comes from within — and not our lack of nautical attire or the amount of time we spend on social media — makes all the difference. When we see that our unhappy moods are just like the weather — that they come and go and pass like clouds — then we don’t have to work so hard to fix the outside world to make our insides feel better.

So what’s the cure for social media envy? See it for what it is, and I think you’ll find it clears up all on its own.


Brooke is a mentor, writer, and recovered worry wart. She helps fellow angsters get out of their heads and into their lives.

The Daily Lift

Grounded insights on living well — and loving well — in an unwell world.

Brooke Landberg

Written by

Working toward freedom.

The Daily Lift

Grounded insights on living well — and loving well — in an unwell world.

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