Social Media Façade

Someone once said “Most loneliest people are people with most followers and most active in social media.”

Social media has been a part of our lives for many years. It is used to connect with family, friends, and job opportunities by providing an avenue for people to express themselves.

However, social media has become a new way for people to self-censor what they post on the internet and portray themselves in certain ways that may not be the true representation of who they are. This can create feelings of low self-esteem and depression if one does not have many followers or likes on their posts. The more one posts online about their life – whether it be positive or negative – the more they risk having that shared with others and impacting how others see them as a person in reality.

For instance, a social media user may be posting about how much they love their job and that they have a new boss that is great but, in reality, they are struggling to provide for their family due to the stressful nature of the work that is being done.

This causes them to feel guilty and self-conscious about it because they want others to see them in a positive light. This can lead to feelings of stress and anxiety towards the truth of who they really are as a person.

Social media may also cause one to feel depressed if there is an issue going on with their mental health. If they have been suffering from depression and are experiencing symptoms like sadness, hopelessness, anxiety, etc., the more they allow others to see their posts on social media about how excited they are about their “new year” or how much “life is happening,” the more this adds to their depression and makes them feel that it’s all too much.

Social media has become a way for people to express themselves online. It also becomes a way for others to judge one’s personality by what is posted online. Anyone who has suffered depression before should take note of this intuitive warning that we can act illogically in order to not be judged by others.

Photos of social media are everywhere these days – and they’re usually filled with people having a great time! Shows like Friends or Gossip Girl seem to be set in an ideal world where everything is perfect, but what do these shows leave out? The superficiality of the newsfeeds that we see on Twitter and Facebook, for example, contribute to a culture where real life is rarely as carefree or fun.

Social media has made it easy for people to scroll by default, scrolling from one post to the next without thinking about what each individual post means.  When you don’t take the time to read the whole post, you limit yourself from learning anything about a person’s viewpoint or what they stand for. The social media we see today is perfect for wasting time and looking at pretty pictures, but if it’s too much of a facade, people will notice. Clicking on links can be addicting because of the potential for having satisfying experiences available to us at all times; however, as studies have found, “individuals who use social media sites more often are more likely to experience negative emotional consequences than those who use them less often.”  This creates an environment where we constantly check and update our social media feeds in order to feel attached to it.

As people are getting more and more active with social media, the consequences of not reading a post can be devastating.  Negative comments left on a person’s page can leave an imprint in their brain that can affect them as they get older.  For example, when you see someone, you love or otherwise care about being hurt, it is not uncommon for us to have negative emotions in the form of depression or anxiety. Now imagine seeing that same person over and over again on your social media feed; it could start to feel unreal if the posts are too good or too bad. Often, we may be unaware that this made us upset because we were distracted by other things.

The presentation of our social media content can leave a false image of our lives; it looks like we are always having a good time or always working hard but never both.  When we don’t see the whole picture, we miss out on some of the essence of people’s stories. 

In comparison to previous generations, this is a relatively small problem compared to the more serious problems that are affecting society around us.  It is important to recognize that social media, when used in moderation and with an awareness for what we’re given access too, can be beneficial to our mental health as well as more socially interactive in real life. It is important to continue and to improve upon our usage of these sites, but it is also important to limit the amount of content we see.  It is important to be aware that our social media feeds do not reflect the real world that we want to live in, and have a more realistic view of what it means to live well.