One of the worst catches of social media is that it gives us an escape from reality. We should periodically, perhaps even daily, face who we are. If you don’t like what you find, make an effort to change what you don’t like, don’t just cover it up and pretend it isn’t there.

We’re stuck. We, as a society, have forgotten how to put down our phones and be present. This has resulted in us not only living vicariously through the posts of others but the posts of our own persona, the character that we’ve created out of ourselves online and use as a facade to hide behind. It’s a lot easier to make our public-self look good then to face who we really are. Then we get confidence based on the amount of attention that we get from our posts and we start living for that instead of for the sake of life. We need to live what we feel and know and have come to value our one life here, not pose for pictures in the hopes that more than 40 people will see it. Don’t just do things for the pictures.

We’ve become so staged in life. We stage our lives and we don’t live them anymore. Living life is rare and living it abundantly is something that people are missing. You shouldn’t live your life posting. It isn’t because I don’t like it and I’m telling you not to, it’s because you’ll be missing out on so much. We can lie to ourselves and convince ourselves of almost anything, but living a calloused life of selling yourself short of truly living isn’t a good way to spend your one life.

Life is difficult. We all go through a lot of hardships, some of us more than others. It’s also difficult to be vulnerable and it’s hard to know who to trust and who you can open up to. I don’t even necessarily suggest telling everyone everything, but for your own sake you shouldn’t only put the good stuff out there and lie to yourself about how you feel. Don’t pretend you’re doing well but then when you only face yourself, you know how scary life is and how much is wrong and could go wrong and every tragic thing that has happened and every fear you have hit you all at once and you try to bear that on your own. It’s great to be able to go to someone else when you have problems but to do that you need to confront the truth that you have problems, as opposed to just stacking more and more cheerful posts on top of the problems.

You can use social media to tell someone you love them and show appreciation for them, but please don’t say more about them online than you say to them to show that love. If you don’t love them, then don’t pretend you do to save face, work it out in the real world, face to face with the person, with authenticity. You probably have good reasons to feel how you do about the person, and you don’t have to be friends with everybody, but don’t use that living person who goes through as much as you in their own life as a prop to make yourself look better. They have just as much value as you. They deserve love and not an act. That doesn’t mean you can’t post about them or put them in your story or talk about a fun shared memory, the point is that what you share on social media should be a reflection of your true self. You shouldn’t put more effort into making it look like you care about someone than actually caring about them and showing them that love in a way that they can feel. Yes it takes more effort, and maybe you won’t get recognition for it from a lot of people, but it will mean a lot more to the two people who are actually involved.

I say this because I love you, even if I don’t love what you’re doing. I don’t even know you and I’ll still stand by that. Try distancing yourself from social media for a little while, and making sure that your personal relationships are getting the attention that they deserve.