An Open Letter to My Younger Self and her Digital Life
Dear young Celina,
Yes it’s me, Celina. Yes, from the future. Pretty cool stuff, right?
Anyways, I’m here to tell you about your future using social media. Listen up.
First things first, you probably don’t want to get a Facebook account. Some stuff happens in 2018 and it’s a whole deal. But I know you, because you’re actually me, so I know you’re going to make an account anyways. When you do make a Facebook account remember that what people are posting is a highlight reel. The best of the best, the coolest of the cool. No one’s posting their lazy Friday nights (at least not at your age) or their worst pics. Take everything with a grain of salt and don’t let it bug you that your life isn’t like your friend’s lives because -news flash- their life isn’t really like that either.
The next thing I need to tell you is about Twitter. It’s this platform where you post short thoughts and stuff. You’re surprisingly very funny on it. When you’re in your heyday you’re probably going to think that the favourites, retweets and replies you’re getting are the best things since sliced bread. I’m telling you as a friend, although it’s cool right now, there is more to life than tweeting everything that happens around you. The interactions on Twitter are just that — interactions on Twitter. It’s a type of social currency that’s playing with this thing we call the economy of attention. Long story short, it’s your attention so focus on better stuff than who favourited your tweet.
Snapchat is the next big one we need to talk about. It’s a real-time photo sharing app and you’re gonna get major FOMO from it. Y’know that feeling when you hear about something fun that’s going to happen but you can’t go? That’s the fear of missing out, and Snapchat makes it 10 times worse. Instead of wondering what you might have missed out on, you get to actually see it in real time. Sounds fun, right? No. I know you’re going to download Snap, but try not to worry too much about what everyone else is doing because it’s probably not as fun as it looks anyways. And don’t worry too much, in 2018 Snap gets way too confusing and people stop using it.
Some other quick ones are Ask.fm and Tumblr questions. Let’s get one thing straight for a second, letting people be anonymous on the Internet is the highway to bullying and online harassment. Both of these sites let you answer questions from anonymous people, and while some are cool questions, a bunch of them are stupid or mean or a general waste of time. And, can we be honest for another sec? Most of the questions are from your friends because unless you’re reeeaally cool (which sorry, you’re not) no one else really cares. Remember to be nice to people because being anonymous isn’t a reason to be mean. And stop answering those “send me numbers and I’ll answer honestly” question threads. They were annoying and no one was ever honest.
The last social media app you need to know about is Instagram. This app is the coolest. The picture edits are cool, everyone’s posting cool things, it’s great. A quick warning: it won’t actually get cool until about 2016 but hold out for it. Unfortunately, all the bad stuff I just told you about comes together in this one app. The pictures are without a doubt people looking their best with the best outfit, lighting, and editing for their digital highlight reel. No one really looks like that all the time. The likes and comments and followers aren’t everything, stop looking through who liked your stuff — you have better things to do with your time than trying to feed your ego with social currency. Yes, you’re missing out on things but that’s life. You can’t be everywhere all the time, stop feeling fomo and be present in what you’re actually doing. Don’t be a screenshotter. Don’t feed into online harassment even if the person doesn’t know you’re doing it. Don’t.
That’s all I got for you. Good luck out there buddy, you’re gonna do alright.
Also, no flying cars yet, I’m pretty upset about it too.
Love always,
Future Celina
