Hello friends!
I wanted to shed some honest light on something because I know social media usually reveals celebrations, highlights, and strengths. While sometimes weaknesses, lessons learned, and struggles are exposed on social media it is certainly not easy to do. Sometimes it may not always behoove us to public service announce struggles as well. OR we find that exposing these things brings support and comfort for ourselves as well as others! We all have different thresholds for what we feel we want to expose or not.
I recently committed to some serious honesty in these blogs. The feedback I had been receiving from others in day to day conversation indicated relief in feeling empathy about certain experiences. One of the areas that I hear about frequently in conversations is the disconnect between what we do on a daily basis versus what is perceived. Along with this is the pressure that is placed on us to either maintain that perception or change it...whether that be self-imposed or not is a deep question that varies among individuals.
That outside perception is often due to the output we control on social media (of course), how we interact with the people around us throughout the day, and also how we interact with ourselves! None of this is rocket science, new, or very profound- I totally get that.
What I am finding value in though, is actually stating the obvious because in my own experience one of two things happen. The first is that social media distorts our contentedness with ourselves via comparison with things that don't reflect day to day life very accurately ("duh" statement). The second is that we become desensitized to hearing things that really do point to reality like "I don't have my crap together, but nobody does right?"
I am finding it beneficial to redirect forward thinking to these two ideas because I think a lot of people KNOW how social media distorts things but forget to actively engage with it in a forward thinking way. If you're anything like me you zone out a little bit when you scroll through social media, which means you receive a lot of information somewhat passively. That information isn't necessarily bad at all, but what you internalize about it can be.
For myself, I have recently started doing reality checks when seeing things through the window of Facebook or Instagram. For the things that are posted to celebrate and share memories and experiences it is so fun to be able to see what is going on in everyone else's life! What a joy of modern technology! I just have to remind myself that that is not the whole story. Emphasis here- that doesn't deductively reason then that the whole story on the other side of the social media post is deceptive or bad, but rather the deliberate and active thinking not to compare anything else going on in my own life with what is being shared.
Otherwise it is easy to see things and ponder the discrepancies. No joke friends, I can't tell you how many times I have seen my 20-something year old peers going on world adventures and my thoughts are "We started off in the same school, we work similar jobs, both take full credits in school at the moment, I barely have time to sleep-how do they have time,money or energy to travel the world to these incredible places?! During school too?" (I am laughing just typing it). It is true though... if not for wanting those places of relaxation to be a reality for myself, then just out of not being able to make sense of someone else's schedules and lifestyles based on my own struggles.
I can tell you exactly why this is so easy and hilariously hypocritical!
My Facebook has been a networking platform for my modeling career for many years. With that being said, of course there is a plethora of model pictures and posts on my page. Without variation or knowing me in person it could easily be perceived that I live a lifestyle oriented around that, and I am very aware of it. Likewise I am an athlete, soldier, and pageant participant. All of these things add substance to my life and how I get to meet new people and have new experiences. Those are all blessings worthy of celebrating BUT let us not miss from casually scrolling through that I am seriously a college student who struggles to get regular sleep. I also have to work extra hard in school! I have had countless tutors and spend so much time doing homework and studying. Sometimes it feels like it takes me a couple hours to get something in school that other people take to naturally. I also sometimes struggle with feeling socially isolated (hard truth!) because the millions of things I choose to dedicate time to require so much of me.
As is the vicious cycle, I then have regular seasons of re-prioritizing in order to better handle my schedule and still make room to enjoy being in my twenties and investing in strong relationships with peers. I definitely don't look like my model pictures on a daily basis and am not ashamed of that in the least. Sometimes I still get bouts of acne as if I were in high school again and it is embarrassing! I love my sports but sometimes I have to force myself to do them because my drive to do them ebbs and flows with how tired or overwhelmed I am. There are times of complete defeat when I need a legitimate mental health day,and there are contrasting times of rocking it out and life is fantastic.
Some seasons are full of healthy balance but even in those seasons there are challenges. Sometimes I fail so miserably it puts me in an awful head space that takes prayer, reflection, and exposing vulnerabilities in order to work my way out of it. Apologies have to be offered for falling short as a friend, daughter, girlfriend, coworker, whatever it may be because it is impossible to always be excellent in all areas of life. You don't see all of these things on social media though and it can be very misleading if you aren't actively engaging with the content. We lose face to face interaction with social media a lot, and that frequently keeps away the face of being human with all that it encompasses.
The point is that I myself am very aware of the difference in my own life of what is perceived versus what is lived out every day, so I now scroll through social media with the same respectful understanding of others. Believe it or not, even if I don't know what else is going on in someone's life, celebrating the great things they post can be even more wonderful knowing that they are living life with curve balls and things they don't always share just like me (or you or the next person) AND something great happened or they got to go someplace that is exquisite! If they share things that are grave or vulnerable, it is exciting to see their bravery and possibly relate to them.
The other idea that I mentioned that acts a little bit like the antithesis of the previous thoughts is that we become desensitized to hearing things that really do point to reality. I realized this when a friend said exactly what I wrote previously: "I don't have my crap together, but nobody does right?" This blew right past me until I thought about it again later that day when I had a moment of tears after something in my life turned out negatively. I called that person up and said it back to her "I don't have my crap together, but nobody does right?" She cried and laughed with me as we breathed through a moment of acknowledging just how human we are, and how okay it is have things together when you do and not to be ashamed when you just don't.
Keeping up the perception of having your life together is valuable in some settings, especially professional settings, but don't forget that that perception doesn't have to be your reality in order for you to be okay with yourself and where you are at. If I had to live up to the life my Facebook sets out before me I would be miserable and forever chasing emptiness. I think it so valuable heading into another holiday season to remind ourselves to ACTIVELY engage with social media instead of passively ingesting whatever messages are put out on it. This is the time of year where we often see more vacations, more gifts, sometimes more Christmas wedding engagements, more materialism, more obsession with vanity and money. It is also the time of year where we can see much of the opposite and possibly reconnect with people who are coming into town to share the holidays with their families. Hopefully we are using engaged minds and realistic thinking to actually connect with each other and our lives and stories, not just Facebook stories, feeds, and hashtags.
"The more social media we have, the more we think we're connecting, yet we are really disconnecting from each other."
-JR
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