Where your online image is more important
To be fair, I love social media. I’m an active user of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and I have those outlets to thank for a variety of connections and experiences I would have never made without them.
I’m also guilty of posting a couple of selfies here and there (sometimes you just have to capture the good days, am I right?), and sharing a recent accomplishment or something I’m proud of with my followers isn’t unusual.
I allow passive-aggressive tweets to be painted with my familiar sarcastic tone every once in a while (usually things only my Mom finds funny), and I even share enjoyable screenshots of conversations once in a blue moon. In fact, I believe I posted one last week.
But what happens when the number of followers you have becomes more important than the number of friends you regularly talk to? And I mean genuinely have a conversation with – I’ll even include texting under the ‘talk to’ umbrella.
What happens when you’re more concerned with how your life appears through your Instagram scroll than the life experiences you’re supposed to just simply enjoy?
We have collectively morphed into a generation that decides the quality of our lives and the people we are through the number of likes we get in comparison to somebody else. We believe a favourite or a clicked-like on a friend’s shared new job announcement is support enough. We don’t see a problem in going months without talking to one another, so long as we keep up the double-tap recognition on their Instagram photos.
Social media is great, don’t get me wrong. These outlets have allowed a friend to travel months on-end in Europe, sharing her experiences along the way all through the brilliant use of a hashtag. The same outlets also give me the chance to stay in the loop with old friends I may not have the chance to talk to regularly, and provide family members with a glimpse of what I’m up to, so catching up on those annual holidays isn’t always a start over.
But it’s really not the social media outlets that I have a problem with. In all honesty, it’s how we choose to use them, and, as a result, how we choose to let them reflect us.
We browse Facebook profiles of people to gain a better understanding of the person they might be, and we allow that profile to be the ultimate factor in the judgment process. We scroll through other Instagram users’ pictures, and we decide that the life we’re living isn’t nearly as exciting as we thought it was. We begin to filter and change our opinions because we let a tweet of 140 characters persuade us (who knew we were so easy to convince).
Most of all, though, we present the person we wish we were through our social media outlets, instead of allowing our Facebook profile, Twitter feed, and Instagram pictures to represent the person we actually are.
We won’t post that tweet in fear of others silently judging us on the other side, and we delete that Instagram picture that only got 10 likes (you know you’ve done it). We have to post that picture of you and the girls at the bar last night, because in all seriousness, if you didn’t take a picture did we actually go out?
We upload a picture of our delicious breakfast this morning, probably throwing the hashtag-healthy on it, without so much of a hint to that being the first breakfast we made ourselves in a little over a month.
We grab our best friend’s arm to tell her to look at us and laugh so we have a cute ‘Insta’ to post this week, obviously laying claim to the most fabulous candid friendship. What? No one has to know the whole picture was planned.
And – get ready for it – we don’t really know it’s your birthday until Facebook sends us a notification about it.
Our perceived public image is no longer a mirror of the personal; instead it’s the image we wish we saw every time we looked in the mirror.
Social media is, in so many ways, the world at our fingertips. As a generation, we are the first to be exposed to these outlets, and the first to be given the opportunity to master them. Master them, however, for whatever reason, has translated into creating an online image that we have to edit and filter – literally. I mean sure, ‘Lo-Fi’ makes your eyes pop, but then we wonder why it takes 24 attempts to take a picture we can live with. We’re constantly trying to live up to this unreachable standard that is only available through the crops, contrasts, and filters of social media. We’re constantly trying to live up to the online image we have created for ourselves, an image that we feel we have to attain in order to be content with the person we are.
Our perceived public image is no longer a mirror of the personal; instead it’s the image we wish we saw every time we looked in the mirror. It’s just another pressure-filled status we’re forced to live up to daily (as if we don’t have enough of those already from parents, family, teachers, and employers). The worst part about this one, though, is that we’re the only ones responsible for it.
We let followers and double-taps define us, when we should be defining ourselves. The amount of ‘likes’ your status compiles does not equal the accomplishment, and the number of favourites your tweet rakes in does not imply how witty you are.
Social media should be a reflection of the best you, not an unrealistic, edited you with a filter. And that doesn’t mean to snap a selfie and throw the hashtag-nofilter on it. It means to allow yourself the space to reach your potential and more, and if your Instagram scroll reflects that, then you’ve mastered something we’re all still trying to figure out. Until then, we all get a double-tap for trying.