Thrive Counseling, serving FL, NJ & GA

The thing about social media is that it’s fine until it isn’t. In other words, while social media helps us stay in touch with distant family and friends, helping us to stay connected with our communities, it also has a unique way of making us feel worse in the long term.

Even though we know that much of the content we see is specifically curated, we still can’t help but view it as glimpses into other people’s lives. As if we’re peaking through a window into someone else’s home. The problem is that it’s generally an illusion. Filters and photoshop are often the reality.

The clean house with quietly playing children, the people with flawless skin, flowing hair, and an hourglass figure, the Norman Rockwell-esc photograph of a perfect family dinner in a restaurant on an island on a foreign beach with the sun setting in the background can be fictionalized. And we know this (or at least suspect it). 

So how come it’s still so alluring?  

Humans are social beings. We are hardwired to be part of a community. We get a rush from feeling like we’re part of an exclusive group—“in the know” of special information. Social media has harnessed that deep desire by allowing us to count the number of likes, retweets, mentions, friends, pins, comments, followers, tags, circles, and connections we have.  We often find ourselves glued to our phones waiting for that notification of acceptance to chime. And so we fall into a bad habit of allowing others who we view at the top of our group hierarchy to set the bar for life goals, ultimately defining success for us and controlling our self worth.

But, again, the majority of posts that we scroll past are just an illusion. They are unobtainable because they come from a computer program.

So how do we overcome it?

First, we need to acknowledge that we all want to feel accepted. We all want to be liked. It’s hard not to allow the cyber-opinions of others to define our self worth.

Then we need to ask ourselves: does any of it lead to a better, fuller life? Does it really make us happy? Or does it instead feed our insecurities? 

Allowing others to control how we see ourselves is a slippery slope that can result in lower confidence, depression, loneliness, and a warped view of reality. Our peace and identity is too precious to allow others to rule over it.

The final step is to refocus our priorities and define (in specific terms) what is really important to us—independent of what others may think. It is imperative for us to set our own boundaries for success. Only then can we have an accurate measure of our accomplishments and truly take pride in our achievements. Conversely, it also gives us space to learn from our mistakes in a safe environment, free from outside judgment, so that we can begin to grow towards the people we want to be.