It can be argued that social media is the best invention ever thought up. What young people fail to realize is that social media follows them wherever they go and that it will NEVER go away. Not only can social media come back to harm you later on in life, but it also promotes the idea of perfection. The number of followers you have or the number of likes you have can provide a “rating” for your looks. On top of all of this, it is an inaccurate representation of the person. Social media can help or harm, but it definitely is not the best invention in the modern day.
As someone who still has middle school pictures from the inside of the Apple store at the mall on Google to this day, I advise you to be careful. I had an assignment for college which made me Google my name and report what came up. I had to show a picture of me with braces sticking my tongue out. Yeah. Be careful guys. Social media is the best “safe with a lock” on it out there. There is no getting anything off that site, its locked tight.
Social media (specifically Twitter and Instagram) makes us believe that we need to get a certain number of likes/followers for it to be worthy. I remember back when I would delete my post because “I only got 100 likes.” Then I thought to myself, I never notice how many likes other people get on their posts, and I doubt that anyone ever noticed how many I get on mine. Really think about it, when is the last time you looked at someone’s photo and thought “Oh, only 200 likes?”
I don’t know about you guys, but every time I go on my explore page on Instagram and see someone who looks absolutely flawless in every picture, I feel horrible about my Instagram and how I look in my pictures. WHY. Why is it this way? Why does every picture have to be perfection with the best lighting and most amazing quality? Why can’t we just post pictures in our pajamas eating pizza?
Not only does social media show you what you should look like, but it also shows you what you should act like. Having a fun night in watching movies isn’t worth posting about on Instagram, instead, (at least in college) it is always pictures of people going out with their friends. In order to feel like you can post anything, you have to look like you have a million friends and that you are never just sitting around in your room. And that brings me to my next point, posting pictures with friends. The people who tell you they can’t post a picture with you if they just posted one two pictures ago. This leads me back to my original point of trying to look like we have the perfect life with lots of friends. Once we start to accept that image doesn’t matter, social media will change for the better.
Let’s be real, we don’t look like perfection every day, so why do we promote that on social media? Post what you want, look horrible in that picture that your friend looks rockin’ in. Don’t care so much what others think of you. After all, social media isn’t real “social” interaction anyway!