A Letter To My Younger Self
Hey younger me,
This letter isn’t gonna be filled with adventurous or romantic stories. Sorry about that. It’s gonna be more of a warning from the future. So pay attention because this is serious! You’re gonna grow up in a society where inspirational posts are trying their best to break up online hate towards people. This hate is in the form of homophobia, racism, bigotry, and ignorance (just to name a few) and unfortunately it’s extremely prevalent.
What I just mentioned is a lot to take in considering you’re like 10 years old, but I trust you to be mature about this, so bare with me.
Continuing on, I know you recently signed up to MSN. It’s gonna be a rocky start as you develop a deep addiction to it. But once you finally fight through that, you’ll maintain a pretty chill relationship with future social media accounts. This is because the older you get, the more you use your accounts in a way that’s only beneficial for yourself.
What I mean by this is, you started on MSN because all your ‘besties’ had it and so did your crush. Now when I look back on your desperation to constantly start mindless chats with people, I find the desperation funny. It’s funny because now you get annoyed at the slightest notification buzz or beep, and are in no rush to reply to messages… letting them sit for hours at a time.
I’m really proud of this growth.
Anyways, if you remained constantly clinging to the MSN network, I don’t think you’d be able to handle face to face interactions. There are gonna be many moments in the future where you think to yourself “ugh I was so awkward”. So I can only imagine how much more awkward you’d be in person if you mostly communicated with people through a screen. It’d be rough.
Now, if somehow you aren’t thinking that this is a serious letter so far, this next bit should change your mind. Once you hit age 11, mental health will become a huge factor in your life. During the downs in this health, you’ll start using social media as an outlet to try and forget about your problems. You’ll also feel as though you’re losing your creativity, so your drive to post content decreases.
It’s during the times where you want to escape your problems that practicing social safety is put to the test. You’re gonna find yourself on anonymous sites like ‘Whisper’ where people vent about their own issues. It’s with the introduction to these sites that you’ll begin to stop and think: are these people in the chats for real? Are they just catfish? Do they intend on venting about their problems or do they want to connect with people for other more promiscuous reasons?
In fact, these are important questions to think about, no matter what type of social media platform you’re on. Trolls pop up everywhere, not just on anonymous sites.
An example of that will occur when you’re in high school. One day when you’re on your favourite platform, Instagram, you’ll see that you’ve gotten trolled by some girls. It’ll all be because of some boy and it won’t be anonymous. You’ll have access to the trolls’ pages just as they have access to yours. You actually end up handling the situation quickly with some deleting and blocking, so good on ya, but this will forever be a reminder that sites involving anonymity aren’t the only places you can get caught up in a bad situation.
The older you get, the more you’ll use social media for spreading your ideas and telling stories. As you continue to grow, you’re enjoyment of using a camera to capture moments will grow too. So focus on that, and when the creativity hits, don’t be afraid to share your ideas. You started on most of your social media accounts because your friends were already on them, but I promise, you eventually learn to care less about what they’re doing on these platforms.
In fact, I’ll let you in on what things are like for you as a 20 year old. As of right now, you don’t post on your accounts too often but you’re looking to change that. You try to stay mindful of how FOMO isn’t a factor in your life, and you’re not posting to intentionally cause this feeling in anyone else either. You currently have a total of 9 pictures on Instagram, which your friends enjoy chirping you about. Their nagging however isn’t why you want to add more content to your account. You want to do it to improve on your photography.
So younger me, there ya have it. You learn to focus on what makes you comfortable, online and in person. This lesson isn’t learned all at once, and you’ll still be learning as you get older. It’s a lesson that’ll help you navigate through the ever changing landscape of social media. There’s a lot of posts online that’ll make you consider acting or looking a certain way. But honestly, no one’s acting or looking the “right” way. They’re hopefully just doing what works for them. And you should do the same.
