There are about 320 million people who use Twitter. Those users post about 6,000 tweets a second which adds up to 500 million tweets a day. That is A Lot of media at our finger tips. I have often said, "I don't watch the news, I get my news from Twitter." All the recent news gets on Twitter, whether it is a horrible shooting, to an athlete leaving their team, to a hilarious video, we stay up to date on what's happening in the world through Tweets. What does this mean? It means that Twitter may have a larger influence on us than we may like to think.
We see so many posts about how other people are living their life or how their boyfriend/girlfriend is treating them. Many times when I look at my Twitter feed I find myself wishing I had the experiences these people are having. I get jealous and start to think that my life is boring and I don't have fun people in my life. I wish I had a boyfriend who spoiled me like the girls on Twitter have. I rethink my relationships and life, and that should not be!
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Often times in my last relationship I would get worried that my relationship wasn't good enough because it was "Twitter perfect." My boyfriend didn't buy me presents or surprise me with super cute notes or dates like I saw other couples posting on Twitter, so I second guessed my relationship. This is not how it is supposed to be! All relationships are different and you cannot judge yours based on social media! I had to repeat that in my mind over and over.
Another place I recognized this fear of not living up to social media standards was with college. This summer I have had a great time and have been loving being able to relax. I even had some stress about my rooming for next year, so when I started seeing people tweet things saying, "If you don't miss being at school, you picked the wrong college!" That freaked me out because I didn't miss school, I was enjoying summer and actually nervous about going back to school! I started second guessing my whole college choice just because of a few tweets! This is crazy! I had to remind myself that I was placed at this college for a reason and everyone is different.
A few Twitter posts have made me second guess myself so many times and that is absolutely insane! How can social media have such a huge effect on me? I don't know how these 180 characters can have such an influence on our lives but I know for me they do. I have to guard my mind against this and remind myself that my life is good and I am on my our path. Twitter is great and interesting, but it does not define how my life should be. Don't let the picture of a "Twitter perfect" life ruin your real life.
