If you have Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat, or the next big social media platform, you see it all the time. Girls, and guys, with the perfect pictures showing their perfect lives on their perfect vacations or perfect daily lives with their perfect friends. Perfect perfect perfect.

There is only one problem.

None of it is real life.

Whaaaaat?

Okay, well some of it is real life. It’s just no one’s life is a perfect life all the time. It’s just the best moments of a maybe average life.

When I went to Europe to study abroad, (I know!), my friends and I all took the time to get the best off-guard, candid-looking photos at all of the touristy places we visited. The Eiffel Tower, the Trevi Fountain, the Alps, the Colosseum, and the various castles we visited.

Of course, we were really there, and these sights were real. However, something was missing from these pictures.

These pictures did not capture the hour-long bus rides, train rides, or miserable flights that we endured to get to these locations. The photographs did not show our thighs chafing from walking around or shorts all day, nor did they show us waiting and complaining to go to certain sights or for dinner or to go back to the hotel.

Sure, all of us on the trip are extremely privileged individuals who got to go to overseas to study abroad and have an incredible once in a lifetime experience, but that doesn’t mean our lives are perfect, then or now.

Social media is not real life. No one posts their hard moments or when they have crappy days.

It is so difficult when you are going through a rough time to grab your phone and see everyone supposedly living their best lives. Sure, they may be having a good time, but you never truly know what someone else is going through from their social media alone.