How Social Media Is Slowly Ruining Our Lives Forever

I know it has been said before, over and over again to be exact, but I feel the need to reiterate how damaging social media is for our generation.

As a writer, I cover a lot of celeb pieces and I am exposed digitally to the lavish lives of celebrities and all of the happenings of the rich and famous.

It’s fun to write about it and give my opinions, but from time to time, it overwhelms me because I am slowly taking in the lives of people I don’t even know.

I do have an Instagram page but I haven’t posted since I got an account for fear of falling into the trap of comparison and how I felt today has justified why I shouldn’t begin to post unless I am doing so for reasons other than flaunting my life.

Gathering some pictures for one of my pieces on Beyonce for Coachella, I came across a page on Insta dedicated to celebrities and even normal people and all of the images were just filled with perfect moments and subconsciously, I found myself comparing what I saw to my own life.

Thinking to myself, will I be single forever? Is the person I am with right for me? When will I graduate school and get enough money to look half as bomb as all of the people I am seeing online?

After logging out I just started to tear up because I realized I am not happy with my life because I am not rocking designer things right now, I am out of a job and I am not living this lavish lifestyle that we are bombarded with daily.

I am not what society deems as being acceptable when it comes to living a life that seems worth living.

We are surrounded every single day and updated almost every hour by news of celebrities and how they are living their lives and I honestly had it on my heart to write this post because I feel like we are starting to disconnect from our reality compared to that of a celebrity’s.

We hear about the Kardashians and lavish baby showers and what places they visited. We hear about how much Beyonce is slaying her performances and what she wore and so on and so forth.

I think I legit realized today how much we rely on pop culture in this day and age and rarely do you hear other news stories that are ordinary receive as much praise.

We are much more interested in hearing about a world that we dream about being a part of, one that is for most of us, nowhere conducive with our lives and because we can’t be like these celebrities and live like these celebrities, we get depressed and treat our own lives like they are nothing. 

This is why for the most part, we only post the good and what seems exciting in life because that is what is socially acceptable.

Trips abroad, fancy dinners, shopping sprees, vacations, and the glitz and glamour of our weddings and baby showers, instead of moments we cried because there were bridesmaid drama and nights we spent up with our babies because they cried all night long.

What we see online, is ALL a facade. No your friend’s life is not perfect and yes she does cry sometimes and hate her life too. No, you are not cursed because you aren’t making a salary right now even if you are in your twenties. You are living a NORMAL life.

We seriously need to start recognizing that in real life, people work hard and struggle to become the people they want to be. We work shitty part-time jobs that we hate while having a dream as a writer to publish a book.

We go to school and date people we may have been in love with and then we break up. Some of us (ME) are actually not making that much money even though we are in our twenties but we do want to save so that we experience the life we actually want.

I want us to all get to the point where we can look at the reality of our lives and simply count our blessings and understand that in reality life is actually pretty tough and good things don’t come by easy.

YouTube is just as bad when it comes to depicting a life based on false expectations, which is now one of the reasons why I watch only a specific set of YouTubers who give advice on how to live a better life but are real people who are down to earth.

So if you are like me, and find yourself comparing to yourself to celebrities, Instagram stars, and even your friends and now hate your life because it isn’t what you thought it would be right now, I want you to know that God didn’t create you to be miserable. He gave you a real life, with real struggles that you will conquer even better if you stick to reality.

You will reach your dreams and goals, but don’t hinder it by wasting your time in a world and culture that at the end of the day, isn’t even real.