How Social Media Shape Our Wants
If we don’t know what we want, someone else will tell us.
Social media make us miserable. They present a false interpretation of reality, making us constantly feel behind and creating false needs.
Today, after scrolling for some time, I closed my phone feeling stressed and unhappy. What a fabulous world is out there: everyone traveling, having fun, and enjoying life, while I’m at home reading and writing. My life isn’t as fun.
Before I opened those apps, I was totally happy with my life and my goals. I wake up every morning next to the man I love. We are healthy, we have food, a nice home, and we get to see trees and the sun every morning. We work out together, have fun, and watch TV in the afternoon. I get to read all the books I want and write every day, excited by the very act of doing so. My life is incredible.
You see, while I’m starting to relax, live, and understand that societal expectations are projections of other people’s insecurities and that in reality, we aren’t supposed to do anything we don’t deeply desire, 30 minutes of scrolling can still make me forget everything I stand for and feel sad about unfulfilled desires that weren’t mine in the first place.
What is it about social media that makes us feel this way?
Studies show that excessive social media use is linked to higher levels of anxiety and depression. According to a 2018 study by the University of Pennsylvania, limiting social media usage to 30 minutes per day can significantly improve well-being.
Humans are political animals, as Aristotle suggested, but that doesn’t mean we are made to look through the keyhole at other people’s lives while ignoring our own.
It’s not healthy, ethical, or fair to ourselves. We mistake posts for reality when they’re just illusions. Nobody posts their failures, hard times, money problems, or heartbreaks. They show us what they wish they were, and that makes us miserable because we wish to be like them.
Consider an average influencer with the perfect body, clothes, adventures, money, and a great relationship. You are looking at a person trapped in a persona they created to be liked, forced to maintain this facade. They don’t have a perfect body — bodies aren’t perfect. It’s just good lighting and posing that create this impression, or even worse, substances like anabolic steroids that can seriously harm their health for the sake of appearance. None of the things they claim to have are real, and they are very unhappy.
This vicious cycle keeps us all depressed and addicted to social media. We live through other people, envy them, and they live fake lives, losing their real ones.
We live in capitalism, where everything revolves around money. Social media celebrities are just pawns in this huge chessboard. They are living advertisements for big companies that create false needs in us. We end up forgetting what really matters and spend our lives chasing the impossible, running after materialistic happiness like hamsters in a wheel.
If we don’t know what we want, someone else will tell us, and how could we ever know what we want if we don’t escape the noise and spend time with ourselves?
Social media can be a useful tool, but don’t let yourself believe that their current use is normal. There’s a difference between using them to share your work and constantly spying on other people’s lives, comparing them with your own.
As humans, we are very competitive and often respond to this fake reality by overexposing our lives. We need to prove we are as worthy as those people, starting to fake our lives to impress. It is a toxic cycle of misery leading to depression.
You don’t need access to everyone’s life, and surely not everyone should have access to yours. Your privacy is more important than you imagine. The people who own these media platforms don’t want you to know this; they want us obsessed over our accounts. We are just numbers to them — numbers that make them money through our data they can sell or use for ads.
They make us sad and force us to believe that to be happy, we need to buy things. Do you understand?
Now take a step back and think: Is this how you want your life to be?
Real life is out there, get out of social media for a bit and clear your mind. Read a book, go for a walk, write, draw, listen to music, play with friends — just live a little. Once the influence of social media weakens, think to yourself: What do I really want from my life? What do I love? What makes me happy?
YOU will decide what happiness means to you and then you can go after it. Don’t let others influence your decisions. Break free from materialism and the need to be liked. Remember, you have no one to impress.
We only live once, but if we do it right, once is enough!
If you’ve reached the end, thank you! Your support means a lot. Feel free to drop a comment and share your thoughts — let’s chit-chat about anything you wish! :)
