Dear Social Media,
What's wrong with you? Now, I'm not saying everything you do is bad, but for the most part you make people feel like the worst person on this earth. Everyone loves you and is addicted to you as if you were some god of some sort. But in reality you’re not, matter in fact no body likes you, you’re a waste of time to most people and you’re a huge excuse as to why us teenagers/ adults don’t get our work done. The world would end without you.
You like us to visualize things that can’t even be real at times, for example a picture of a huge mansion or a lifetime vacation with the caption being follow your dreams, or one day you’ll get there. There’s some days where everyone hates you. There’s no avoiding you you’re all around, EVERYWHERE. I personally even use you everyday, I use you to communicate. You influence people in so many ways either to go to one side or not. You ruin friendships and relationships by making us pick one side.
The idealistic look of how I should be looking in the mirror lowers my self esteem because I know I can never get the body of the stunning ten out of ten drop dead gorgeous model in a photo shoot thats filtered. You tell me I should be eating either fast food or Trader Joe's almost everyday. You give me an excuse to be “happy” with the excuse being it’s national cookie day and therefore I should be eating a cookie. There’s no escaping you, I wake up get ready look at the time on my phone, waste my time because of the notification I got 2 minutes ago. The smallest thing like advertisement on my instagram for a new song gets stuck in my head the entire day and distracts me from the real world. As little as I may have in my bank account you make me envy of what others post and brag about on social media, allowing myself to go in debt.
I’ve known you for at least 10 years of my life putting you before others as if you personally were a person. There's a generation judgement between my generation and my grandma's generations. I even feel like elderly people only use me for my knowledge not only on social media but on technology. Applying for a job is even hard I don’t have freedom of what I would like to post because of the fact people from my work will friend request me or they will stalk my account just to see what type of person I am, and will judge just by the pictures.
Why do I have to wait until everyone captures the perfect angle of not even my body but the simplest thing like an ice cream cone? They’re not even supposed to have a specific shape in the first place. I love/ hate how convenient you are, you become my refuge but you cripple me to just breath. I hate how you blur my idea of love with your silly “10 signs he’s your soulmate or he’s into you.”
Why must the whole number of likes validate my whole worth as a person? “My story” goes beyond that, I am more than a zooming in and out filter, why can’t my behind the scene be as valid/ acceptable as my all is well story. I realize everything is more vivid when my eyes or attention is not glued to you it allows me to see imperfections and flaws like how freckles are okay and that my eyebrows don’t have to be on fleek everyday.
Why do I always have to be the best version of myself when it comes to posting something or reading anything on social media. When I unglue myself from you it’s like a whole other life and I’m now able to understand why the size 0 girl stained herself on the first day or that the popular girl isn’t so popular on a friday night because she spends it by herself, or how she doesn’t even get any attention at home and that's why she gets it at school. I realized you programed me to be an autopilot and judge someone so quickly but see you can’t hate someone whose story you’ve seen in the last week because they only gave you a glimpse of their life, and you can’t hate someone because they did get that picture with the perfect angle of the ice cream cone. But, you see you make me miss out on building new relationships with people. Don’t get me wrong I still love you I’ve seen your genuine intentions and your unintentional consequences. But for the most part we all need to disconnect to intake life. You’ve connected the world more than ever but still I’ve never felt so disconnected, and so detached.
Sincerely,
A Social Media User
