After hitting snooze on my phone’s alarm clock at least four times, my day starts with eyes glued to my phone. The daily routine first starts with skimming texts, viewing Snap chats sent to me, then Snapchat stories, Instagram, Facebook, and then email. And the worst part? After it is all checked and viewed, I do it all over again for the next fourteen hours until I fall asleep with the screen light illuminating the walls of my rooms and eyelids.
As you can see, I am not the one to complain about social media. Unlike my grandpa’s “put down your damn phone” (who now is teaching himself how to use an iPhone) I completely think that technology is advantageous and social media is a way to express yourself, bring the world together, and inspire yourself and others.
However, the new stories feature on instagram has sparked a fear within me. and I truly thought I would be the last to complain about social media use.
As I did my usual skimming of all social platforms, I clicked on my beloved instagram where I saw bubbles at the top. Instagram stories? Well that sounds familiar. Too familiar. Almost like it’s exactly the same as Snapchat. Oh, it is. But now, it’s just one more thing to check everyday. Except now instead of thinking peoples lives are perfect, now I get to the lives of people who are perfect. I barely even use Twitter because it is just one more platform I have to force myself to belong on, one more style of media to adopt, and one more way to stay in touch with the same people I stay in touch with on everything else. Personally, this new update is just one more thing for people to check, adopt, and worry about.
You may be thinking okay, we get it... you are annoyed. And some people may really like this new feature. It does have some good qualities and companies can use this feature to be more personable without having to worry about gaining Snapchat followers to engage. Other than that, even though this feature is currently pretty innocent, it worries me for the future updates.
My generation contains some confused guinea pigs that have tested out all of the new up and coming technology and media changes. We understand how to work with this stuff and make it our own, yet we still know how to function in everyday life and use social skills offline. We get inspired and jealous of slender girls dancing in Mykonos with a pineapple but we are able to also know that not everything online is how it seems. However, not everyone has this perspective and some people are losing their offline lives to blend in to this virtual epidemic.
I’m not criticizing younger generations whatsoever, especially because mine often gets a lot of heat and I understand. However, I have seen how some younger people talk about social media, look at others based on it, and the lengths they will go to have a perfect presence online.
At my job, I work with many girls ranging in ages but mostly in high school. They are some of my favorite coworkers because they are sharp and up to date on pop culture, music, and humor. I never realized how different of a perspective they have on social media than people around me in college. For example, I was working with (lets call her) Susie. We got a new employee that she hasn’t met yet but who I was good friends with (lets call her Emily). I asked Susie if she knew my good friend Emily. She replied “Emily! Oh my gosh I LOVE her.” I asked do you know her?” she responded with “well no, i haven't met her, but I follow her on instagram!”
This opened my eyes to a lot of things I haven’t been exposed to. How can you love someone you never met? How can you completely decide they are a good person just based off of their pictures and captions? How can you tell if she is humble, a good friend, or a hard worker? Don’t you think its weird that someone had to take that picture of them in a field with a lace bra on? Social media is harmless until it gets to this point and can get even worse. I don’t want the girls and boys to grow up in a world that judges others based on materialistic qualities and their ability to convince their dad to take an artsy photo of them. I don’t want them to miss Niagara falls because they are just there to take a picture of themselves in front of it or to buy things they don’t need just to make sure that maybe someone somewhere will envy them. I don’t want them to miss out in this living breathing life on the outside of a screen, and I’m afraid that the more we are forced to scroll through other peoples lives, the more we are going to reflect on ours more negatively and try to make up for it in superficial ways.
I am only writing this because I have been a victim of this lifestyle too, and I am friends with a few “instafamous” girls who have came out to admitting they have gone out of their way and wasted their day with makeup and clothes and positioning themselves in front of perfect lighting just to get one picture that has had their followers wallow in self pity over, and they are sick of pretending.
The platforms we have currently all offer different things that are healthy, but too many features are going to only add to the unrealistic ideals of others and ourselves. Who knows, this feature could add more positive benefits than I see right now, and maybe I will change my mind in time, but Snapchat stories was enough for me. We don’t need another window into others' lives, higher expectations, or another thing to check each morning.
