I very recently had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine about why he hasn’t had any social media accounts for the past few years.
He told me that his life had become a lot simpler since not having to maintain his online identity. A big factor that played into this is that he stopped comparing himself to others as much as when he was active on social media and that got me thinking…
While in the past few years I’ve all but stopped posting on Facebook, I definitely spend a good amount of time just reading through my timeline. If you stop to think about it though, why do you really go on social media?
Whatever your reasons, it isn’t a great idea to spend too much time drifting around in a sea of show-off posts from people who you don’t know well or even like.
Social media proves as a good medium for people to constantly showcase the best aspects of their life on social media. It doesn’t always seem this way, but reality is often what is lost on social media. We emphasise the best versions of ourselves instead of the real versions.
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel. – Steve Furtick
As Steve Furtick said in the quote above, we often compare our true reality to our social media friends’ idealised, pseudo-realities leaving us feeling inadequate and envious of our friends’ “blessed” lives.
Haven’t deleted all of your social media profiles yet? Good. Because it’s not that bad. You might ask how one can stop feeling this way, here are some tips:
- Spend less time on social media
Social media is an important tool for someone in my line of work so while I don’t agree that you should delete all of your social networks, I think most people will agree that they waste a bit too much time mindlessly scrolling through that feed. - Spend your time more productively
I also recently read the following quote (on Facebook, ironically), and it may just be another silly motivational quote, but I think for this purpose it will illustrate my point nicely:It’s true; the early bird gets the worm. So does the late one, and the one in between. Because by design, there are always enough worms. In fact the only bird that doesn’t get a worm is the one who doesn’t go out to get one.
What I mean to say is that you could have spent the time you were reading about other people’s accomplishments to work towards your own.
- Count your blessings
The way you feel when looking at someone else’s achievements may be exactly how someone else feels when they look at yours. Why don’t you grab a piece of paper right now and write down a few things you are thankful for. If you were feeling jealous of others before, that might be about to change if you reflect on what you DO have.
