Dear Annelise…
It’s been roughly 12 years since you signed up to share your life with the rest of the world on Facebook, and a lot has changed since then…
Your social media experience is going to start out great… You’ll connect with all your friends and even some of your family members in Europe, you’ll spend hours scrolling through the bumper stickers and graffiti apps (those won’t be around forever and they’re pretty awesome so enjoy them while you can) and you’ll share all your wacky pictures and videos with everyone in your social network. For the first few years your social media journey will be exactly what it’s meant to be; a true reflection of who you are!
But as you grow older you’ll start to lose your carefree nature little by little until you unfortunately end up developing a low self-esteem in your late teens. Although you won’t truly understand why at the time, there are several stressors that you’ll be exposed to by using social media, which are the underlying reasons for this unfortunate character change. But don’t fret, I’m not just here to scare you, I’m going give you the lowdown on what these stressors are, how they’ve impacted you, and what you can do to save your mental health.
(1) Highlight Reel
As I said before, the way you use social media and what you post on your accounts will change as you age because you’ll start to view social media as a portfolio (or “highlight reel”) where you only post your best content to present your best self to others. Gone are the days where you’ll feel more than happy to share pictures of you making weird faces and just clowning around — now you’ll be pressured by society to post only your best moments, pictures, achievements, thoughts, etc. Unfortunately this is going to hinder the way you use social media more than you know… you’ll develop a perfectionist complex that keeps you from posting pictures unless they are PERFECT in every way. Having this obsession with only sharing content if it’s absolutely perfect is really going to suck because you’re going to feel totally isolated in your feelings since your friends won’t openly show if they are struggling with the same mind-set. You’ll need to work very hard and be very careful not to allow these feelings you have about sharing the best content to keep you from posting at all (which is where you’re currently at in your social media usage timeline). My advice to you on this is that you need to keep in mind that life isn’t perfect not matter how much you want it to be, so even though you struggle with having the confidence to share moments of your life publicly due to their imperfections, you need to be able to enjoy life and not feel so self conscious about sharing moments of your life with your networks.
(2) Social Currency
Out of all of the stressors, this is the one that will affect you the most! When you first join social media you’ll share moments of your life candidly, not at all caring if no one “likes” or “retweets” what you’ve posted, but as I’ve said before, the longer you use social media the more you will become a slave to it and to those who use it by posting only what you know will get you a high level of what’s known as social currency. Social currency is the measurable amount of positive social media recognition a person receives on their social media posts, which is then used to calculate whether or not the post is valuable. By placing so much value in the amount of attention you get on the things you post you are going to be placing your self-worth in the hands of people who range from complete strangers to your best friends, and this will only make you self-esteem issues worse. Eventually you will reach a point where you go on a “social media purge” and you’ll untag and delete any pictures, videos or status posts that doesn’t show a high level of approval from your network. That’s because, to you, it will demonstrate that you’re not popular and perhaps not even well liked by your network (even though you know that’s not true). You’ll see the lack of positive attention on your “perfect” posts (which we already know took a lot of courage to post) as pitiful and because you don’t want to be perceived as pathetic so you’ll delete the aforementioned content. The reason you think these things, even though you know them to be untrue, is because when you look at the postings you can see a number of people who decided to interact with your post in some way and if not enough people did then there is a quantifiable measurement of the value that you posses since (again like I said before) social media is a representation of who you are — if they don’t like your post then you take that personally and you think that they don’t like you.
(3) Fear of Missing Out (F.O.M.O)
I know it seems inconceivable now, but in your senior year of high school the effects of the first two social media stressors on your mental health will reach a boiling point and you’ll end up getting rid of your social media accounts… well everything except Instagram (pretty much because you want to keep up with One Direction). For a while it’s going to great and your mental health and self-confidence is going to be at an all time high… until prom season. Apparently it’s a mandatory thing for girls at school to post pictures of their prom dresses in a Facebook group to make sure that no one gets the same one. Not having social media means that not only can you not show off you dress (which is absolutely stunning and looks like a grown up version of the Cinderella dress Oma made you for your 3rd Halloween) to your classmates, but you also won’t be able to share in the collective excitement about each other’s dresses. All of that is going to make you feel like a person on the outside looking in and that mentality will instil in you an anxiety that you’re missing out and so once again social media will draw you back in. The problem is that social media provides connectivity, and so as much as you believe you would be happier without these mediums that have proved to be toxic for your mental health, being without them can have the same affect. It’s pretty much a lose-lose situation.
(4) Online Harassment
One of the biggest dangers of using social media is the possibility of becoming a victim of online harassment or even turning into a harasser. I’m sure it will be a huge relief for you to know now that you will never (well at least up until this point) be subjected to this type of torment. In addition, you are, and always will be, a kind and caring person who knows how much words can hurt someone and so you will also never inflict that kind of emotional pain on someone. You’ll continue to live by the rule that mom taught you: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it. I know it’s cliché but it’s true, no one should be attacked for presenting their authentic self online. Even though you’re never attacked for it, you know what it’s like to be afraid to post something authentic and not fabricated. What this means though, is that the only person who has ever harassed you about your posts is YOU! Look at all of the above stressors. In every instance you are going to be your own worst enemy… which can actually be worse than having someone else be you enemy, because it’s much easier to disregard someone else’s opinion than your own.
Advice Time!
It’s going to take years, but eventually you are going to realise that although you place a high importance on the amount of attention you receive for whatever it is you share on social media it doesn’t make you any less of an amazing person than you are now. What you need to do is make a continuous effort to create the best online experience for yourself, whether that includes unfollowing toxic people or public accounts that feed you negativity regarding your self worth or spending less time on social media platforms. I know it’s very difficult (trust me, you’re still trying to tackle these issues at nearly 23 years old), but you need to take back the power you have placed with the rest of society when it comes to how valuable and worthy you are — I just know doing that will make all the difference in the way that you use social media. The biggest piece of advice I have for you, Annelise, is that social media can open doors to some of the most amazing opportunities that will help you get to exactly where you want to be in life. So retreating from being present on social media is something that you can’t afford to do. I promise you, your future will be INCREDIBLY bright if you overcome these stories you have
created about your self worth and that you need to only present a perfect image of yourself to be liked by others. You’re a beautiful, funny, intelligent girl. Embrace who you are and all your imperfections and let the digital world know!
xoxo.
Your future self ♡
