How many of us have gone on a social media detox for a few weeks before going back to square one all over again? Doomscrolling, monitoring our notifications like each ping says something about our likability. Like each friend who doesn’t leave a flattering comment on our posts is secretly holding a vendetta against us, indirectly saying, “It’s not that great of a picture, babes!”. This, of course, is ridiculous—but relatable. I have found myself on multiple occasions not engaging with my friends’ posts, not out of pettiness but because I’m simply not in the mood. Instagram and TikTok have now gone past a highlight reel and become platforms of an artificial/ false reality. This doesn’t just apply to what we post, but also to the posts we double-tap and like in general. With Instagram’s latest feature of showing us what our friends are liking/reposting, even doomscrolling has become a performance. Even I find myself cautious about which reels and pictures I double-tap, wondering how it might look to my friends. Not my actual friends who know me, but the little icon bubbles of old classmates, family friends, an ex, a crush. If they see my icon pop up, then surely it has to send a message: I’m funny, I’m cool, I’m into indie poetry and Sofia Coppola-esque films and visuals. We can’t even doomscroll in peace! It’s absurd that we even let ourselves pay attention to things like this. To abide by unspoken rules and etiquette. Liking a story immediately implies we’re trying to make a move. A guy in a relationship liking our pictures automatically means they’re unfaithful to their partners. Unfollowing an old classmate from school implies we hate them. I ask myself who made up all of these assumptions and why we, as a collective, blindly follow them. Frankly, it’s exhausting to keep up.
No wonder we feel insecure or burnt out more often than not when we let things like this take up too much real estate in our minds. Everything is a performance. Everyone has a role. We put on our best outfit for the day like a costume, pose in front of the camera lens like we’re looking out at the audience from our stage and pick a meticulously effortless caption as if it’s a well-written script. Then the responsibility falls on our audience to continue the show by engaging with our performance through likes and comments. For example, I was at a party a few weeks ago, and someone was telling me about this girl she couldn’t stand, but then the next thing I knew, I saw her leaving a comment that said something along the lines of “most beautiful girl in the world ilyyy” on said girl’s post a few days later. Huh?? Why would someone go out of their way to gush over someone they said they claimed to hate? I found it unsettling how easy it is for people to fake their affections- especially when it’s uncalled for, but that’s the kicker, isn’t it? People just want to be liked, regardless of whether they like you. It’s like a social cachet. It says something to them that they can gain the approval and even the affection of the person they don’t like. I thought we left this kind of mentality in secondary school, but it seems we haven’t.
Based on what I’ve observed, I don’t think it’s a maturity issue but a cultural one. We’ve normalised this kind of behaviour because we’ve gotten so used to projecting a persona online that it has seeped into our personal lives. What does it say when we have over 500 followers, five different friend groups, but less than a handful of people we can trust? It’s disheartening to say the least. People say that social media has ruined modern relationships, but I think it’s because we let it get to that point. We police what our partners can like and follow instead of working on trust and communication. We take 100 pictures to try to impress the person we like instead of talking to them. Everything feels like a game because we willingly keep playing. This isn’t to say we should go off the grid and delete all of our accounts, but to show how absurd our relationship with each other through social media has become.
Maybe we should focus more on making social media more about how fun it can be and less on the scrutiny. Perhaps it’s just a perspective shift. Post whatever you want without monitoring the likes and feeling the need to hide the like count if it’s not as much as you’d like. I don’t know if it’s really possible to post something with zero regard for how it will be perceived, since the act of posting itself is a form of exhibition. But I do know that deleting social media is not a solution; it’s a quick fix. It doesn’t actually fix the issue; it just gives you a reprieve. If we want a better, healthier social media experience that doesn’t leave us feeling anxious and burnt out, it needs to start with how we interact with it. To stop feeding the beast that makes us want to scroll through our story viewers or go through the person we like’s following list and highlights. Sure, everyone does it, but just because it’s normal doesn’t make it healthy. Even performers need a break eventually, so, it’s better to willingly choose to stop performing before it gets to a point where you’re forced to take a break.