An important issue that has cropped up especially in the last few weeks, is the power behind social media.
With the advance of technology, social media for the better or worse has become a big part in most of our lives. We check our Facebook, update our twitters and are posting pictures on Instagram before we have even taken in the moment.
The world we live in thrives off of instant gratification, we judge our popularity based on how many likes we obtain, and judge ourselves based on the superficial exterior that others give off, from their social media updates. We confuse our screens for real life and become lost in the trying to be something that we are not, because what we want doesn't really exist.
The world we live in thrives off of instant gratification, we judge our popularity based on how many likes we obtain, and judge ourselves based on the superficial exterior that others give off, from their social media updates. We confuse our screens for real life and become lost in the trying to be something that we are not, because what we want doesn't really exist.
The power of social media is immense. It dictates how we look, how we think and how we define the things around us. We become caught up in the externalities and often forget to work on who we are, off screen. It becomes hard to separate between on line and real life. Our expectations of who we are and what defines us, become blended into a mixture of filters, and Kylie Jenner's lips. We lose touch with reality and become consumed by what we think we should look like, based on a reality that someone else has created to reflect an ideal world.
Time and time again you see girls and boys succumb to the pressures of the online world, unable to maintain the unrealistic expectations of what we should look like, or what we believe is aesthetically pleasing.
That doesn't mean that I don't have Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. I am fully aware of all the positives of social media. However, I think that most of us are too sucked in to see some of the harmful effects that living life online can have as well.
I think that as a population, we spend too much time making sure that externally we are giving off the appearance of someone that will get lots of likes. We judge success on how many followers we have, not on what it means to be a good person. We are misdirected by a world that seems a lot more high definition of our own, and captivated by a culture that appears so much more fulfilling than it is.
The problem with becoming absorbed by social media is that we begin to live life in 2D. We live through a screen instead of experiencing the world first hand, and this inhibits our experiences in ways that we are too blinded to notice.
Sometimes it is good to just go offline for a few days. Take in the world around us and see beauty in things that don't have a filter on. I sometimes feel that our sensitivity towards each other and the way we explore things has become more and more superficial, because the place we most express ourselves is online. I'm not naive enough to think that we should all just switch off and stay that way, but I do think that every now and again it is good to just give it a rest. Extract yourself from a world that doesn't shut down for even a second, and look inwards at who you want to be, rather than online to see who you should be modelling yourself off of.
-LF, LR, and MG xxx
I think that as a population, we spend too much time making sure that externally we are giving off the appearance of someone that will get lots of likes. We judge success on how many followers we have, not on what it means to be a good person. We are misdirected by a world that seems a lot more high definition of our own, and captivated by a culture that appears so much more fulfilling than it is.
The problem with becoming absorbed by social media is that we begin to live life in 2D. We live through a screen instead of experiencing the world first hand, and this inhibits our experiences in ways that we are too blinded to notice.
Sometimes it is good to just go offline for a few days. Take in the world around us and see beauty in things that don't have a filter on. I sometimes feel that our sensitivity towards each other and the way we explore things has become more and more superficial, because the place we most express ourselves is online. I'm not naive enough to think that we should all just switch off and stay that way, but I do think that every now and again it is good to just give it a rest. Extract yourself from a world that doesn't shut down for even a second, and look inwards at who you want to be, rather than online to see who you should be modelling yourself off of.
-LF, LR, and MG xxx
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