toxic relationships with social media
toxic relationships with social media.
Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your ways into the answer, one distant day in the future.
- Rilke
I am really sorry for not writing about the environment, or about related actions that we can take in order to help our planet. I would really like to post more meaningful content that is sincere and hopefully beneficial to you in any possible way. I am planning to write a blog post on our treatment towards animals, animal cruelty, and the whole “giving freedom to an animal because you love them”topic. But just as equally, this blog has slightly evolved into something different. Much more than just tips to helping the environment, but also, a small safe place where I am just a random stranger sharing her thoughts.
This blog has become a journal, though a slightly more formal one, still a journal nonetheless. I would really like to talk about topics that have become more relevant, and that is also something more interesting to discuss right here, right now. So here I present to you, a discussion on the toxicity of social media. This will not be a normal post on the toxicity of beauty standards, instead, an approach in the lives conveyed by influencers, rather than the looks.
Note that almost all of this post is entirely based off my own opinion, and they may be wrong in your perspective. This, like I said, is just a small place to share a variety of thoughts, please don’t take them too seriously.
As a student, the shortcomings and toxicity of certain aspects in our society is certainly brought forward to us very directly. The portrayal of a “perfect life”led by social media influencers, the constant never-ending gossip and discussion around grades/rankings, and the prejudices or judgments made on people who don’t fit the “good student mold”, even in a so-called “safe”environment of school. I really would like to address the first of these many issues. Perhaps in the future I shall rant on about the latter.
social media | ˌsōSHəl ˈmēdēə |
noun [treated as singular or plural]
websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
I am reasonably sure that the toxicity of social media is starting to be spotlighted by many news articles, YouTube videos, and even by the social media influencers themselves. Social media can be a devastating pit hole that people fall into and hardly ever come up from again. Specific pictures, posts, and TikToks of beautiful women who fit society’s beauty standards can lead us to believe that we are not “good enough,” that we don’t yet have the perfect face, the perfect hair, or the perfect body. Social media can constantly cloud our judgment about beauty, reinforcing society’s beauty standards and resulting in our disappointment in our self-image. A regular part of our minds will compare ourselves to the person in the photo, but we also compare our lives instead of beauty.
As a student, I have to tell the truth, the looks of other women or girls on Instagram genuinely don’t affect me as much as their lives do. As a constant watcher of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram vlogs, I constantly see other people’s lives on screen. The perfect “productive” 12-hour study day, the “relaxing get my life together” nights, or even just “a realistic weekend hangout” can all make me doubt my life. Seeing how productive, fun, and balanced other people’s lives are has only led me to try to perfect my own life.
These videos are all be amazing YouTubers and Tiktokers, I AM NOT SAYING I DISLIKE THEIR VIDEOS!! (@Breanna Quan, @Annie Long, @cafe.studyy, @lynndaonay, @adelala)
I am not saying this in exaggeration. I cannot stand a single mistake on my part, and I cannot tolerate an action that seems “not aesthetically pleasing.” If I perform a move that seems to fit this category of “not aesthetically pleasing,” I ignore it and pretend it never happened, as if my life was a video I could edit and trim. But ironically, life isn’t. It is a live stream, a constant one. I can’t ignore my mistakes, as everyone, everyone makes mistakes. It is a natural part of life, and it will always lead to growth. It is the beautiful mistakes in life that make us normal and human. Yet because of the falseness and oftentimes idealized version of the lives on social media, a normal human being like me has become unattached to the small moments, the real moments. Social media has led me to not live in the present but instead, in an idealized version of my life, inside my head.
I have recently begun to read the famous classic collections of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke. As the sentence in the paragraph above this post, an important message that I have received is to live everything. Social media might have made me only see the perfect parts of other people’s lives, and our society might have even led us to believe in the idea of perfect lives. Still, I need to acknowledge the fact that we are simply human beings. No matter aesthetically pleasing the lives of others may seem, it is simply not possible. Who can live without lying on our beds and doing absolutely nothing for an hour? Everybody has days like this, and we need to accept this. We need to accept our whole life. Accept that sometimes we cannot get up from our beds as the alarm bell rings at 5 am. Accept that we all have days where we question the meaning of our existence. We all have days where we want to shop crazily until our feet and arms hurt. We all are human. Let us see not only the successful parts but also the raw and the flesh. Let’s truly live, for once.
No need to perfect your hair in the morning as if the whole world was watching you. Instead, take the small moments to open your window and breath in some fresh air. Live in the present, notice all the tastes and beautiful smells of nature. Or even take a shower - that way, your hair can be naturally amazing. If lighting candles seem to be a waste of time, don’t do it just because other people on media seem to do it. Instead, get right into studying, one assignment at a time, and focus on making it sound. Do not worry about whether your desk seems to be beautiful. (But on the other hand, if a pretty desk can help you work better, ignore what I just said.) Remember to take it one step at a time, one moment at a time.
I also want to address something that might have come to your mind as your read these words. I am not accusing YouTubers of being fake; I enjoy watching their lives profoundly, as even if I were to film a vlog, I would instead leave the beautiful moments in and cut the other parts out. And maybe the vlog is completely real, I am simply speaking from my experience with videos. I think we can never get rid of social media, considering how much of our lives it has already dominated, but we definitely need to watch everything with new lenses. When seeing a productive person on screen, we have to learn not to feel guilty about ourselves and our lives and use it positively as a source of motivation and enjoyment. Enjoy the fact that other people are also working hand in hand with you. Please acknowledge that you are sharing similar goals, and they have been willing to share their lives online with you.
This is the message that I would like to leave you with, even if social media might not be a large part of your life:
Social media sprouted as a way for humans to share their lives with various people, don’t let it dominate your life. Keep it as it should be - an outlook into the lives of strangers, a way for people to connect, not for people to compare.
Live your life as it is, grow and change for the better, not to match the lives of others, but simply for yourself. Live every raw moment in life (this does not mean romanticizing your life.)* Remember, we are all human beings. No matter what part of their lives influencers are sharing, they all make mistakes, which is normal. Don’t ever forget that.
Thank you for reading this small post. I hope this could be a new outlook for you, even if you don’t think social media is as toxic as I write it to be. I also understand that change and escape from social media is not highly realistic, but it is a new mindset. Perhaps as you implement the mindset of living fully, other positive impacts could sprout that might not be related to social media. I would also really really love to hear different opinions on social media from you too, dear reader. Thank you once again. I wish you the best.
* As I explained, this does not refer to romanticizing your life, which is also, in a way, slightly toxic. We don’t have to enjoy every part of life; instead, live these moments and grow/improve from them.
resources:
Here I list some podcasts/YouTube videos if you are also interested in social media topics. They also discuss social media from different points of view. They might be more information-focused rather than on the solution. I highly recommend just lazily watching them if you have time.
These podcasts and videos are slightly more casual I would say, I will listen to them more for the enjoyment rather than learning.
◦ SOCIAL MEDIA IS RUINING YOUR LIFE & MENTAL HEALTH. HERE’S WHY.
how social media is trying to change us into someone else and why we do not need to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUbOSxf0uPA
◦ MY PROBLEM WITH BECOMING “THAT” GIRL: IS IT A LIFESTYLE OR AN AESTHETIC?
the “that girl” trend and the problems that come with it: (I also think the “that girl” trend is a good portrayal of how social media has led us to long for a certain type of life that is not realistic.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE-b8yEmJQE
◦ SHOULD INTIMATE MOMENTS BE SHARED ONLINE?
a discussion on intimate moments, whether they should be shared online, and how much of our life should be shared on media.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lana-blakely-podcast/id1585768793?i=1000536153594
◦ EMMA CHAMBERLAIN VLOGS
I also really recommend Emma Chamberlain’s channel, though you have probably already heard of her, I think she is a really positive influence and a fresh real voice inside the social media community.