FOMO & Social Media Envy in the 21st century
Somehow no matter what we do, we’re just not as good as that other person on Instagram. 🍃
I feel that social media can be very detrimental to one's self esteem.
It’s extremely hard sometimes to scroll through your feed and see all the interesting things people are doing with their lives.
Some people are living their best life, excelling in their careers, traveling, sky diving, getting promotions, looking flawless in makeup, wearing the best clothes, driving the fastest car, partying with the right crowd. I can go on and on.
But most people don’t live your average instagrammers life. For instance,
They don’t wake up feeling or looking beautiful.
They don’t have a new outfit to wear, or skills to style an old outfit differently in.
Their eyeliner still isn’t on point even in 2019!!
Their lunch wasn’t ‘instagram worthy’
And they most definitely don’t have the luxury to take their own pictures in the ‘golden hour’ because they work 9-6, 5 days a week.
I know most of my examples are restricted to a gender because that’s where I can talk more realistically from.
But these are extremely difficult times to live in because you are not only fearing what you’re missing out on, but you’re also getting sucked into the terrible social media envy paradigm.
It isn’t horrible In it of itself that your friends are living their best life, but on top of that everyone on your social media feed including the few role models you have are doing some cool shit with their lives, which in your head you’ll never be able to do. And suddenly you suffocate on the boring atrocity that is your every day existence. You are experiencing a fear that you have made the wrong choices on how to spend your life, so you spend even more time obsessing over what other people are doing with theirs.
While the fear haunts you throughout the day, Social media envy doesn’t let you sleep at night because the more you look at the life that another person has, you constantly feel like you have to compare yourself to them. All of a sudden you NEED that fancy wedding too, or that exotic vacation.
And while the line between needs and wants gets blurred, it’s just a downward spiral of anxiety and unease.
I have been suffering from it and I still don’t know how to come out it even though on the surface, I live that Instagram life. But somehow no matter what we do, we’re just not as good as that other person on Instagram.
No matter what.
I wish more people spoke about what really happens behind the curated feed and beautiful pictures so that the fear of missing out and social media envy can be controlled before it kills us all inside.
