One of my adolescent clients recently had an epiphany during our session: social media is not real. As we discussed all the ways she felt her peers were surpassing her academically and socially, she stated, “You know what I just realized? What people post on social media is not a real representation of their lives. People are only posting the best version of themselves.” I excitedly agreed with her. I encouraged her to pursue this train of thought. She furthered that people do not post every time they try something new. They only post when they have finally succeeded at something, whether it is academic, like a standardized test, scoring in sports, or starting a new relationship. My client appeared relieved to understand this phenomenon.
I have since discussed this warped perception of social media with others, who have all agreed that this issue extends beyond our youth. In our 20’s, we hear sensational stories of strangers meeting online and it being kismet, while we ourselves spend months, sometimes years, talking to other “singles” through dating apps, who end up not actually being single or they ghost us. We can become demoralized by these experiences, blaming ourselves for being unlovable and defective.
In our later 20’s and 30’s, we begin seeing our peers posting videos of their glamorous weddings and beautiful babies and we start to feel like we are losing time on meeting these milestones for ourselves. In our 40’s through 60’s, we see happy couples with successful children who go on fabulous vacations with them and we lament over our imperfect lives, tricking ourselves into believing that our intimate relationships are toxic, our children are not living up to their potential, and we are simply not measuring up to others. In older adulthood, we see posts by our friends visiting with their grandchildren and we become lonely due to having no grandchildren or resentful to our own families for not giving us enough attention.
We, as humans, naturally thrive when we connect with others, which has been enhanced by social media. In the not so far past, changing schools, jobs, or communities meant losing touch with relationships we cherished and sometimes struggling to find the time or energy to cultivate new ones. Now, we have access to quick and easy connections through chat rooms, dating apps, and other social media. What an exciting innovation in how we develop lasting relationships!
These conflicting observations are bolstered by research conducted by Akram and Kumar (2017). They propose that technology and social media has granted our population with many positives and negatives in realms of business, education, society, and kids and teens specifically. For societal positives, they report connectivity, education, gaining help from others, obtaining information and updates, advertising small businesses, promoting noble causes, and building communities, which are all beneficial to a great degree. However, they report some severe negatives such as cyber bullying and harassment, hacking, fraud, addiction, and the ability to completely destroy someone’s reputation, whether with factual information or through slander.
Although there are negatives to social media, it has provided us a global environment from which to absorb information and reach people who we would never have been capable of knowing before. It has also increased the number of relationships we can collect to virtually limitless proportions. Pragmatically, when we only knew 50-100 people, it was not so hard to learn the good, bad, and ugly about most of them. Now that we have hundreds of friends or followers, it is hard to imagine intimately knowing many at all.
All humans desire acceptance, so when we only have seconds to present ourselves to these infinite others, it makes sense that we would choose to share the most positive representations of ourselves. We want to be perceived as interesting, funny, good students, good parents, etc. But the problem comes when people start to believe that what is presented is reality. Because they never see negative stories, it feels like those negative stories do not exist.
If people shared their lives inclusively, and not just phenomenally, we might begin to debunk this myth that everyone has it better than us or that we are not good enough. Instead of envying others and disliking ourselves, we might learn from each other and grow into people who truly engage with those around them and have healthier relationships and identities.
And in the meantime, when we begin feeling bogged down by other people’s posts, we may benefit from taking some time away from our technology and engaging in the experiences all around us, with the people we care about most. Being fully present with our closest relationships can be one of the best deterrents for negative thoughts and promotors of positive perceptions.
Julia Osborne, MSW, LMSW
Julia Osborne, MSW, LMSW received her Masters in Social Work from the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University and is a Licensed Master Social Worker. She has experience working with individuals, families/couples, and groups utilizing techniques from evidence-based practices such as cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, and emotionally focused therapy. She is passionate about working with adolescents, adults, and elderly adults and their families on their mental health and relationships.