On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog
Social media is amazing yet terrifying. Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I love sharing my life and seeing *creeping* others. Anyone can be anything online but that also means you never really know what’s behind the screen. A social media lifecycle is only so long and apps come and go with trends but as a whole, social media is addictive and like every addiction there are negatives.
What is this stuff doing to our brain?
People have been asking this for awhile and the only results have been that it’s bad. Let’s say you post a banging Instagram that you got ready for, posed for, finally picked one picture out of 50, spent an hour editing and now for the moment of truth: how many likes will you get? If you get a lot of likes then you’re riding that public validation high all day long, the stars have aligned for you and the world is good again. If you don’t get the likes you wanted you sit there waiting, refreshing the page and wondering where you went wrong. Was it the filter? Was it the post time? How could this happen?
What if you’re on the other end. You open Instagram and see a flawless picture, they’re in a beautiful place having the time of their lives while you’re laying on the couch watching The Office for the third time. Cue the self-pity.
If you’ve ever felt like this, you’re not alone. A 2017 UK survey ranked Instagram as the worst app for young people’s mental health. As this TIME article explained, the app contributed to “high levels of anxiety, depression, bullying and FOMO, or the ‘fear of missing out.’”
Shockingly, being jealous of others and comparing our lives to theirs based on what we see online doesn’t make us feel good. We know it makes us feel bad but we keep scrolling down our feeds anyways. The people who successfully quit social media are few and far between. The best example I can think of is Essena O’Neill, the 19 year old Australian model who very publicly quit social media in 2015.
At the time she released a video emotionally explaining her reasons behind quitting and urging other young people to look at their own social media habits. In the video she says she is quitting for her 12 year old self who used to consider herself valueless compared to the successful people on social media, and thought that she would find value in this success herself. She opens up about how fake social media is and the vicious truth she found behind the camera. In the three years since this video she still hasn’t returned to social media and most of her online footprint has been deleted.
And she isn’t the only social media success to later come out against social media.
In 2015, Cara Delevingne did a talk where she opened up about her personal struggles with mental health and the messages that the media projects onto girls. Although she didn’t specifically talk about social media, the same messages are present as in O’Neill’s video.
Most recently, Gigi Hadid was spotted a couple times sporting a phone case that says “Social media seriously harms your mental health.” How much more direct can the message get?
The secret harm
Social media metrics too often control our thoughts and infiltrate our feelings. We judge ourselves based on the number of likes, or shares, or followers, instead of the things that should matter. Doing things “for the gram” is only one example of living in a unhealthy media centric world where even getting ice cream becomes a photoshoot to show to other people how “cool” and “fun” you are. We remove genuine moments and replace them with stress over algorithms and getting the perfect shot.
Social media has had the strongest push regarding society’s changing values. We have grown to really value looks and aesthetics over good characters. If you look good in a picture then you’ll probably post it. But in reality, a selfie doesn’t demonstrate anything about a person’s character, it only shows that they’re pretty. Exhibit A: The Kardashians. They are celebrities because of their looks. They haven’t done anything except kill the social media game. Without social media there would be no way for us to even know about them but because we can follow every move they make I suddenly find myself keeping up with them constantly.
A society that carelessly values social media metrics is one that allows people to build themselves exactly how they want to be seen, showing what they want to show and hiding everything else. The stage of social media is a presentation of everything cool — cars, looks, travel, clothes, whatever it is, but behinds the scenes can be a cleverly constructed lie without anyone knowing the difference. We’re all guilty of presenting our best selves but where do we draw the line? As Essena O’Neill suggests in her video, no one can live up to the constructed life they build on social media. Carelessly valuing likes and followers is a dark path that leads to more depression, anxiety and low self-esteem for everyone involved. It’s a dangerous cycle.
While social media brings the potential of connecting, sharing, and learning about other ways of life, there must be a well-balanced diet of narcism and the hearty good stuff. Just like you shouldn’t eat chips all day, you shouldn’t just look at selfies all day. Read some news, share some knowledge, spread some positivity. Technology should be a tool not a distraction.
