When TimeHop was first released, I was excited that I was finally going to see all of the stuff I thought was social media-worthy back in the day. This was fun for the first few days, sure, but as time went on, and I was getting posts from eight years ago…things went south. Why I thought I needed social media at a young age in the first place confuses me, but honestly, I’m just not really sure why I felt the need to share some of the things I did.
There are several things I come across daily that are way too painful, mostly on the eyes. The first thing to always ruin my day are the pre-puberty photos. This is a daily reminder that my awkward stage was even worse than I thought. These pictures are always packed full of colorful braces, bad glasses and acne. It’s only positive purpose is a potential confidence boost, knowing you’ve grown out of that stage (for the most part anyway).
After the rough pictures, bring on the statuses that should have never happened. I honestly wonder why I thought people needed to know “Great night with my girls! Text meeee J” I spent so much time sharing random tid-bits about my life, and it amazes me that I had friends in real life. TimeHop gets personal by bringing back pictures with exes. Luckily, this isn’t a big problem for me because I don’t have a long list, but there's nothing better than laughing with your current partner about old times, and then coming across a picture of their ex. I just see it as a reminder that we’re both finally in the right place.
The funniest part of every day is finding the pictures from the early high school years, where you’ve passed the glasses and the braces, but you’ve gotten free range over your hair color and clothing choice. This was an exciting form of freedom, but it also gave people freedom to ruin their natural hair color and wear Hollister shirts consistently. Personally, I went brunette my freshman year; I’m a natural blonde, and definitely supposed to stay that way.
Those photos show me every day that growing up has to happen on the inside and definitely on the outside, too. Over the last few years I have tried to go through and un-tag myself from those rough pictures that your pretty friends posted because they looked acceptable. Of course, there’s always those few that slipped through somehow, or that got posted as a throwback Thursday. Once I make the realization that the picture still exists, I find myself taking the next 30 minutes trying to hunt it down. The last, and most prominent, TimeHop struggle I face are the posts with and about the specific people I have spent time removing from my life or memory. Once I finally have the sense of freedom that I wanted, TimeHop has to bring up a picture or a tweet posted just for them.
As rough as TimeHop can be, it’s cool to see how far I’ve come over the years. Although, every day there are posts that I never wanted a reminder of. I guess it’s just another way to learn from the past, and definitely a reminder of how social media is supposed to be used.
