What is Social Media is Doing To Our Minds…
This is a subject close to my heart. With the pressures of social media telling us what we should look like and how we should live our lives it is almost impossible to create authenticity within ourselves.
What is authenticity exactly…is it what we believe to be the qualities of our true selves? Because if that’s the case then we need to awknowledge that those thoughts about who we think we are could very well be jaded and altered to societal norms and social pressures…without us even knowing it. That is what social media can do, it can change the way we feel and think so subtly that we don’t even realize it.
So…who takes the blame? The unfortunate truth is that we only have ourselves to blame. We can’t accuse social media of creating something a thought process in our minds that we are only capable of creating. Social media is just a set of platforms on the Internet, we are powerful beings able to take something that does not exist, and make real within our minds.
We need to get our behaviours about social media under control. Social media is meant to be a strategic tool to better our professional lives not ruin our personal ones. Social media is capable of improving business marketing strategies, increasing engagement within an organization, and well just putting a company on the map. However, somewhere along the way it became about jusifying our own personal choices online to get approval from our peers. The issue is what this so-called approval we seek is doing to our minds.
The reliance on the approval from peers on social media platforms is arguable ruining our self-esteem. There is so many people now who rely on the amount of engagement they receive on social media to evaluate their self-worth and that is simply NOT OK. The amount of likes or comments you may get on an Instagram photo does not speak of who you are as a person or what you are capable of. It has become this fake ruse intended to tell people how cool you are dependent on your online engagement. It doesn’t take a genius to relaize this makes absolutely no sense at all.
The fact is that social media platforms represent a highlight reel of our lives. It doesn’t take into account the days where we have bad hair, the moments we cry, or the events we are ashamed to share with the world. It just shows our peers what we want them to see and it is crucial that we remember that. Everyone has good days and bad days..that’s life and that’s okay…in fact it’s better than okay it’s NORMAL and we should embrace that.
If we can figure out a way to use social media for its intended purpose then it will be a positive and proactive aspect in our lives, however if we continue to use as a means to feel worthy and special then we are headed down a very dark and turbulent road leading us ultimately to discouragement and disappointment.
