Go on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc. and try and find a post or picture of someone depicting a positive aspect of their life, whether it's them on an expensive holiday, having a nice time with all their friends smiling, or perhaps a post about some success in their work or academic life. It probably won't be long, scrolling through, before you find one, or several. Now try and find one that depicts a less positive aspect of someone's life. Perhaps showing how lonely they are, how they failed their exam, got fired from work, are eating simple and cheap food etc. It will no doubt be much harder, if not near impossible to find. Why? No one wants to show people the boring and rubbish parts of their life, but instead want to show everyone how good their lives are: how happy they are, how successful they are, how rich they are, how life is just so perfect! No one posts their failures. It's obvious, isn't it?
It's completely natural that people want to be perceived as highly as possible in society, through status, looks, reputation etc. But this has a detrimental impact on everyone involved with the social media used to portray this.
A quote by American philosopher, Eric Hoffer on 'pride' can be applied with good effect to the individuals that post about themselves on social media, saying "Pride emphasises the importance of the superiority of a person's status in the eyes of others. There is fear and insecurity in pride because when a person aims at being highly esteemed and achieves such status, they are automatically involved in the fear of losing their status. Then, protection of their status appears to be their most important need, and this creates anxiety."
It is clear from this that it's best to live without being dependant upon the opinions and judgements of others.
The impact on everyone else is that they look at other people's lives through the small window of social media and start to believe them to be absolutely perfect, with no failures and no negative moments. They then build a picture in their head that is painted so clearly to perfection that it's difficult for them to think negatively of someone's life. Maybe even someone they've never met! Not long after, they will no-doubt start comparing their lives, seeing what they share in common (perhaps having fun at parties) and seeing what others have that they don't (a nice house or perpetual holidays in St. Tropez!). "WHY IS MY LIFE NOT AS PERFECT AS THEIRS?!" they scream in their head as they scroll through other people's Instagram. Well, we probably see maybe 5% of people's lives through social media(?), and as for the remaining 95%, it's not broadcasted for the world to see because it's not as exciting, maybe consisting of lying around doing nothing all day, working, or generally doing boring things that wouldn't generate a mammoth number of 'likes'. It is all very superficial, and it's wrong that it can make us think that people's lives are perfect and that our life is inadequate or even a failure in comparison. We can't let people's social media be so deceptive. Nobody posts about their failures or the boring stuff, and that won't change.
As a side note on the topic, separate from social media, people often focus and dwell on their failures more, whilst overlooking their successes. If we go for something (like a job application, an exam, or qualification etc.) that could have a positive or negative outcome, we generally head into it with the positive outcome as our expectation (although some go in with a negative expectation to soften the blow, should that be the outcome). Thus, if we succeed, we have simply met our expectation, and we don't give ourselves any extra credit for doing so. It simply happened because we are who we are! It's great. We never question our own success. Fail, on the other hand, and something terrible has gone wrong. We haven't met our expectation, and we begin to question ourselves, thinking we must have done something wrong or been lacking in some area. We think we are not good enough, and give ourselves no credit at all, not understanding that perhaps there were multiple different factors in play that caused the outcome, and that we hadn't done anything 'wrong' at all.
It is simply impossible for us to get everything we want and meet the expectations we create for ourselves 100% of the time. It is much healthier to be realistic and not be too disappointed if something doesn't go our way, and still think positively out of the failure, and I don't just mean 'give yourself a pat on the back for trying'.
I will finish with one of the most memorable quotes by legendary basketball player, Michael Jordan, saying "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
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