Most of us love social media. We love to stay connected, tell others what we are upto and know all about others in our virtual social world, We are like "Ohh that post, it’s pretty!" or "how many likes did she get again!" Or, "ooh nice, a ton of people saw my story!" That’s what an average scroll through a feed looks like. But sometimes these small things which may seem like nothing become stressful and may cause you to think twice about how you look. Let’s think a little about how this social media use affects us.
A couple of months ago before the third wave of the pandemic, I went on a small vacation with my parents and I wanted to completely chill out, no socials and just enjoy the place. It was for 4 days. Throughout the entire vacation, I only kept on taking pictures and imagining if it would look good on my socials.
If this was what was happening with me then what about everyone else? It turns out that on an average, a person uses social medias for 2-3 hours a day. Most of us don’t even eat or exercise for that long let alone do many other daily activities.
When I was using social media I often questioned myself. When compared to others, I felt like I was not good enough. I felt like I had to become this person I was not and show that to the world. We use social media to show the best and brightest moments of our life. It’s where you put pictures when you're wearing that shiny dress or when you are with your friends. Sometimes we all suffer from insecurity and we compare our behind the scenes with other people's brightest moments. We want everything to reach a certain level. I would see pictures of celebrities and be like "ohh, why can’t I go on a vacation or be with friends." When we post something we wait for people to see it and like it and keep checking if it has more likes than some other person you are secretly jealous of. The problem is we let other people decide whether or not we are good enough for them. We are obsessed. We are so obsessed that we have a problem when we can’t participate in that world.
Of course social media is fun and kills time but what about our safety? Did you know that 60 percent of all people on social media face online harassment and almost all of them are girls or LGBTQ persons. Remember that ugly snap you sent to a friend and she put it up somewhere without your consent. I mean, it’s just one photo. Surely it can’t hurt. So what if we get one mean comment? But these little problems start building up and become a major reason for getting depression.
Hearing what I said today might make you think that I want you to stop using it. However, I like social media. I do. I love it! I enjoy the thrill when someone writes something good about you. Which is why, I am not speaking for a ban on social media use. I don’t think it’s going away anywhere. But that does not mean we can’t all practice being safe. This means social media is neither good nor bad.
You would not blame Samsung television for a bad show or Twitter because people wrote hateful posts, would you? When we talk about this dark side of social media, we are really talking about the dark side of the people. The dark side of people which makes them write mean things that prompts you to take down a photo you were really excited to share. But we can fix that. Just by recognizing it, by auditing our social media diet. By this I mean by asking ourselves, "did I feel good about myself after this scroll?" or "how many times am I looking at the number of likes I got."
Let me tell you a secret, you do not have to follow your “friends”. The truth is that sometimes these friends who may otherwise be good people are just terrible in their online avatars. So you find yourself in this passive aggressive status war you did not even know was happening. Socials can tear you down or lift you up where you have an actual laugh out loud. Let’s make our time on social media happy, inspirational and full of memes.
Image courtesy: https://dr-julian.com/blog/social-medias-impact-on-mental-health/
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