Life in photos vs reality

We all know the routine: Scroll through Twitter, share a few thoughts, retweet a couple of people, like a handful of Tweets, go to Instagram. Scroll through Instagram, double tap a couple of pictures, look at the “Explore” page, go to Facebook. Scroll through Facebook, share funny posts, creep on your high school friends, back to Twitter. Throw in Snapchat, Tinder and Yik Yak to the mix and you have the continuous daily routine of most teens and young adults.

Don’t get me wrong--social media is fantastic. It is one of the greatest platforms to share ideas, comedy, personal stories and it is an ingenious tool for marketing and targeting specific people for little to no cost. But, as great as all of that is, social media is also one of the most damaging aspects of our generation.

Technology itself has nearly ruined the ability for many to do simple things such as make eye contact or carry on a conversation. Social media has contributed to that as well, but has also gone a step deeper and caused many of us to forget how to feel or think for ourselves.

My question is, are we really enjoying our lives? Or are we living our lives in a way that will show people we are enjoying our lives? There is a difference.

People proudly boast about their high number of retweets or likes, while the Tweet receiving the interactions is about how you are failing a class or how drunk you were the night before. You feel a sense of accomplishment because people either agree with you or find you funny- but do you find accomplishment the actual situation you Tweeted? Are you proud of that F you got in Biology? Are you happy you got so drunk you called your ex at 3AM? Or are you downing yourself purposely to receive a false sense of pride on the internet?

We are all guilty of it, and more and more you see stories of people stepping forward talking about how they lived this falsely extravagant life online just to receive the validation of complete strangers. They often admit to not being happy with themselves at all, and that is heartbreaking.

So I encourage you, the next time you choose to post on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, to think about why you are sharing what you are. Is it to receive likes and retweets? Or did you genuinely enjoy something so much that you want to share your experience with others? The next time you Snapchat an entire concert, ask yourself, is this to document memories I can later look back on or is this a way of boasting about what I’m doing?

Technology is going to continue to advance and new social media platforms will continually be created, it is up to us to remember to enjoy our lives for what they are instead of creating lives for others to enjoy and envy online. Live your life to your standards, not to everyone else’s.