Put makeup on for your Snapchats, whiten your teeth, resize your stomach, post the bathing suit picture, you'll get more likes. Put me on your story so he sees, retweet my tweet, have you actually not seen this vine? VSCO is for the girls, you can post your selfies, pour your heart out on Tumblr, everything is so relatable.
I'm not one to categorize people and clump all girls into this stereotype, and if this doesn't fit you, I envy you. But girls, if this sounds like an average conversation between you and your best friends, that's okay too, you got a big group of us on the same exact boat.
Don't get me wrong, I love getting likes on my picture just as much as the next girl, but I find it disturbing how much we have come to care about such minuscule encounters on social media. We start posting pictures and sharing with thousands, with hopes that only one will see. We depict our lives as perfect so our friends can say we're thriving when really we spent forty-five minutes editing every feature of that picture.
Social media is becoming the foundation of our society, a main way of communication, and for some, the only way of communication. It takes away awkward conversations with one another, but when did we start letting what happens over social media dictate our lives?
We see a little pink outlined arrow and our days are ruined, or a simple text can change our mood for the week. How many likes we get on a picture can determine your self-confidence for as long as it takes until you get a DM from someone asking for your Snapchat.
We go onto accounts who joke about mental illness and share videos with our friends of people getting hurt. We have been conditioned to thinking that failures, pain, suffering, and illness is something to laugh about. We have become desensitized to the all too real troubles of young adults in this society and are consistently making light of troubling situations.
Social media has taken over our minds, got in control of our emotions, replaced social interaction with screen time. It has destroyed our society making girls think they have to look perfect at all times, making any form of criticism or critique tear us down and leaves us in a bad state for days.
In no way am I stating that social media has made women weak, or dependent on their status, for I know social media is also a great platform to promote health and happiness in which positivity is radiated.
But, I will say, being a girl in this day and age, in this society, centered around other peoples opinions, and seeking constant approval for every decision, life can get hard and we can get down on ourselves from a simple encounter with the wrong person at the wrong time. It is undeniable to say that social media has changed societies outlook on what should be, and making that a reality is seemingly unachievable.
