Social Media is for Idiots?
We are all slaves to it. We all are guilty of having a sneaky peak during times when we are supposed to be doing something productive. And we all occasionally (even if we don’t want to admit it) use it to laugh at others expenses. No this isn’t a dodgy reference to Fifty Shades of Grey, but rather the internet phenomenon that is Social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc etc etc… the list could go on and on, naming the various platforms of self-promotion. When I think about how much society has changed on account of the introduction of social media, it strikes me as extraordinary how much these platforms play a vital role in our daily lives. Are we really slaves to them though? Or have they just bettered our once primitive states? This remains to be seen.
Now as I’m writing this, I am thinking to myself how reliant I myself am on social media. I have a Facebook account, an Instagram one and I’m on Snapchat. I used to have twitter but my care for constantly broadcasting my intermittent thoughts slowly depleted about 3 years ago now. Now to me, these provide ways in which I can see what everyone I know is up to. A picture or a video of a holiday, for example, allows me to instantly see the world from someone else’s eyes. Facebook in particular is a useful tool, especially at university, to create ‘events’; you can quickly make plans with your friends and Facebook even nicely reminds you about what is coming up. It enables me to keep in contact with family members that live in other countries for free, and lets my mum know what I’m up to when I’m at uni. You almost feel close to people without having to be close to them at all. We are in this bubble of constantly knowing what’s going on all the time; we are connected. And its quite amazing.
But do we know what is going on all the time? I think what is easy to forget that in spite of the fact that, for all intents and purposes, what is broadcasted on social media is a representation of someone’s life, it is not always the case. In most cases, what someone puts online is a carefully constructed portrayal of what their life is; put plainly, you are merely an observer of their ‘social media life’. I know that when I go onto Instagram to put a picture up from the night before, I’m not going to pick one of me slightly at the wrong angle, bent over double laughing. I’m going to pick one where I am standing up straight, wearing my brightest smile and looking, in my opinion, just right. I’m not (as far as I believe) a bad person, it’s just that whatever I post I’m going to want to make me look my best. If you hung a picture up in your front room, you wouldn’t pick a blurry back-of-shot picture, you’d pick a nice one. It’s exactly the same. I think, however, this is often forgotten and especially with the scrutiny of women’s bodies being so high, you’re often bombarded with these images of ‘perfection’. But the carefully lit, perfectly shot, expensively clothed goddesses that often fill our social media feeds aren’t representing their real life. That’s their social media life. They will have days when they’re in their front room with a whole pizza, feeling down about something. They will experience heartbreak, isolation and the other tough times that we face in real life, you just don’t see it. In the same way you’ve flicked through you’re camera roll to find the pic you look best in, they have too. They just have the sponsor backing.
I do, however, think it’s easy enough for me to sit here and tell you to just ignore it when I even know myself this is not always as simple. Being constantly fed with these images, especially when you’re feeling a bit stressed or low anyway, can really grate on you. But I think once you recognise that social media isn’t always real life, it certainly helps. And social media does receive a lot of negative press, even though there has been a lot of good that has come from it. Because, regardless of the unrealistic pressures it can put on people, it still is responsible for some incredible things. It allows for news publications to instantly broadcast the breaking news to their subscribed readership making the occurrences in the world instantly accessible. When there is an incident, like the shocking events at the Berlin Christmas markets last Christmas, it allows for people to instantly let family and friends know that they are safe. Like I said before, it allows people to be connected to family members or friends from all over the globe, and gives us access to places all over the globe as well. Yep, social media can be for idiots. I often find myself aghast at what people decide to share with the wide world; some of the opinions they share that are completely alien to my own. But I think all social media does is highlight the diversity that the human race encompasses: they’re idiots regardless of what they decide to use as their platform. There are the fair share of idiots in this world, but there are also the fair share of the brilliant, the interesting, the unique. And social media allows us to take all the human diversity and mix it together like some sort of weird human-based stew. If social media is for idiots, then I proudly am one of them.
With thanks to Naomi Gilad
