Being part of the social media generation means that spending a lot of time online is a common thing. Your daily life is in your Instagram stories, and the outfits and songs that you like are inside your liked videos on TikTok. And everything that makes you who you are is being downloaded and consumed by algorithms.
Within that scenario, being influenced by what you should like is an easy thing to happen. Based on what you like or the things that you post, your social media accounts start to be filled with specific and popular content, shaping your personality into being exactly the same as everyone else’s.
A lack of personality
One of the most common issues caused by our heavy dependence on algorithms is everyone looking the same. By recommending the same content, people tend to follow the same ideas and develop the same tastes. The same clothes become trendy, the same songs become popular, and the same places become “must-visit” destinations.
This can make it difficult to understand whether we genuinely like something or if we like it because we have seen it so many times online. When thousands of people are wearing the same clothes, listening to the same artists, and using the same expressions, individuality can slowly disappear.
Of course, algorithms are not entirely responsible for this, because trends have always existed, and people naturally influence one another. However, social media has made this process much faster and more powerful. Instead of being influenced by a small group of friends or people around us, we are constantly exposed to millions of people and their choices.
Maybe it’s time to get off the phone
The problem is not using social media or following trends. The real problem begins when we stop questioning where our tastes come from. If an algorithm is constantly deciding what appears on our screens, it can also influence what we think is interesting, beautiful, funny, or worth buying.
Sometimes, the best way to find out what we actually like is to disconnect for a while. Listen to a song without checking if it is trending. Wear something because you like it, not because you saw it on TikTok. Visit a place because you are curious about it, not because everyone is posting pictures there.
Algorithms are extremely good at learning what keeps our attention, but that does not mean they should decide who we are. Having your own personality means being able to choose, even when your choice is different from what everyone else is doing. Maybe, in a world where algorithms know so much about us, the most individual thing we can do is simply ask ourselves if we really like something, or if we learned to like it.
However, trying to stay outside of every social media trend can also lead to comparison. We might start wondering if we are missing something or if our choices are less interesting because they are not popular online. This shows that the problem is not social media itself, but the way we allow it to influence our decisions.
At the end of the day, technology should be something that we use to express ourselves, not something that makes up our identity for us. Trends will always change, and algorithms will always try to capture our attention. What matters is that we are still making choices behind the screen that feel like our own.
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The article above was edited by Júlia Darú.
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