The Social Generation

We go on Pinterest and plan lives we won’t end up living.

We check facebook to monitor relatives we’re too lazy to visit.

We sit on our phones surrounded by people.

We scroll through tumblr, admiring photos and quotes, yet apply none to our lives.

If our social media truly represented what we did, it would be photos of us posting pictures of us posting an instagram to instagram. Social media would be about social media.

Social media has many in a straightjacket. We can’t escape, and I’m beginning to think many of us live vicariously through our social media persona. There’s an almost magnetic attraction between a person and their phone or computer. We play with them during conversations. We use them to avoid conversation. We use them when we’re bored. We use them until they make us bored. We use them everywhere. Phones in the hands of insolent young adults is almost as ubiquitous as a grain of sand on a beach.

Just how dependent I was upon my phone didn’t strike me until I lost it. That two day intermission between phones, a no-man’s land of connection, a purgatory of social media, (when I wondered the halls of my school nothing in hand, when I didn’t obsessively scroll through instagram as though it were a lifeline, when I actually had to make eye contact) was the most free I felt in years. I completed work efficiently. I paid attention to conversations. And most of all, I found that I didn’t really miss it. It was nice to not be connected to my phone, but rather, to life.

I feel caught in this swift current of social justification that is drowning our generation. I must incessantly update myself on social media or at least be in tune with the social lives of others. There came a point when I realized I took so many pictures of an event or experience, I wasn’t sure whether I truly lived it hiding behind my thin glass screen. No one goes to see the Mona Lisa through a phone screen, no one watches a wedding from behind their iPhone, so why should we live the majority of our lives this way?

I think society has reached a point of vain documentation. That is, posting “selfies” and snapshots of our lives, documenting and inherently bragging about a life we’re not really living. People, myself included, often feel that a moment is validated through its photographic capture. It has surpassed the simple action of sharing a moment and become a contest to impress. In a way, we’re selling ourselves out; we’re selling our memories. I think we’re forgetting how to live, how to take in each moment rather than take a picture of each moment. I find that on the days I enjoy most, I don’t have time to document things on snapchat or instagram.

We’re growing up in a celebrity culture. We follow these famous stars on instagram and twitter and envy their ‘selfie-game’ and their lives. We post pictures to receive likes, as if the number of likes we received gave validity to the moment. We hoard followers. People obsessively want them. We all want this approval from each other; it makes my head spin.

We think social media is this outlet for creative expression. The startling truth is that, for many, it’s not. It’s just a new medium for societal norms to transpose themselves onto people, young and old alike. Our opinions are subject to the approval of others, the presence or absence of likes and comments. If we don’t get enough likes, we delete the photo. If we do, it stays up.

I want to take my phone and store it away, or at least absolve my dependence on it. But, then again, this is unrealistic. Social media isn’t the enemy. No matter how I feel it may be poisoning me and my generation, I don’t want to delete my instagram. I don’t want to stop viewing social media. I just want to stop feeling so dependent on it. I admire the camaraderie it transpires; its ability to connect people who may have never met, open doors, that, otherwise, may have never opened. Social media has altered advertising; it has become a credible avenue for raising public awareness on issues. Social Media has myriad positives that can be tainted by its tragic misuse.

I walk into coffee shops and see people with their faces buried in phones not books, taking pictures of their lattes instead of drinking them. It hurts to think that the time I spend on social media could be devoted to far better things. It hurts to think that I care so much, but I do so little. It hurts to think that I’ll probably get on instagram after writing this.