In a world dominated by constant streams of information through social media, it’s easy to get caught up in the small details of other people’s lives or with everyday news in general. Whereas you once had to pick up a phone to actually contact those you wanted to stay in touch with, you can now write a short wall post or like an Instagram photo to show that you still care and are still “checking in.” This may seem like old news to us millennials, who have mostly grown up during the boom of social networking sites, but it still rings true and while the digital age is not necessarily a negative thing, it is still something that we should take notice of and not take to heart as real.
I, as a nineteen year old college student, would prefer not to fall in love over tweets I decide are meant for me. I also would prefer not to be convinced that the world is having a better or more fulfilling time than me as I see timeline after timeline littered with party photos, baby showers, and over priced meals. Social media has the tendency to distort reality as more fun or more dramatic than life is when you close your laptop; the story about what Kylie Jenner wore last night has no effect on the fact that I have to take a midterm this week and I’m sure my match on Tinder is just an ordinary guy, even if he has a super adventurous photo of him and a giraffe as his first listed photo.
Social media can be both a blessing and a curse. People can get their news faster as it is in the palm of their hands, yes, but most of the news we receive is either various video clips chopped up with a Top 40 song blaring in the background or about YouTube stars that do not realistically do anything but live typical lives. We spend hours tapping through Snapchat stories of people we haven’t spoken with face to face in months and stalking whoever sat behind us in eleventh grade English just because we can. We spend our precious time liking the statuses of classmates we don’t even say hi to in public. If we wouldn’t say “hello” to the hundreds of Facebook friends we have, then why do we follow them? If half the people that favorite our tweets would not be willing to converse about whatever that 140 character thought we produced out of boredom in real time, why is the number of likes it receives relevant? Why are our egos based on a number of followers that don’t look in our direction when our phones are out of our hands and inside our pockets?
I guess the real question is: Are we self-obsessed? I am aware that while no one’s ego is (hopefully not at least) based solely on how many subscribers or comments we generate, it is still a factor we take into consideration. I believe that while social media is not to blame for our self centered nature, it can be fueled through its use. And, while social media indeed has millions of benefits, it is important to remember that pixels and endless codes of 0s and 1s do not tell the whole truth behind our relationships with others. Have fun on social media, but don’t forget to glance up and off your screen every so often and actually remember what matters.
*all media courtesy of photopin.com