The Miss Perfect Dilemma

Okay so this article appeared in Hindustan Times on Tuesday, 18th June but it was shortened so...

One evening, as I was trying to kill boredom through a popular social networking site, I was looking at pictures of a schoolmate’s birthday party that I wasn’t invited to. Looking at how thin, pretty and popular she was made me go green with envy. I cursed myself because I wasn’t perfect. I cursed myself because I didn’t “fit in”.

Social networking sites and teenagers are inseparable. We feel a constant urge to post about everything going on in our lives to update our followers. And teenaged girls thrive on Internet fame. Everyone loves getting attention, their few seconds in the online limelight. Due to this teenaged girls feel the need to always look their best and stay on top of trends.

We always want to give an impression that our life’s a party. Our online identities are what we want to be, rather than what we actually are. I have realized that people are more unknowable than they were before the Internet. It’s all about getting maximum attention. The main reason why sites like Facebook and Twitter are popular is because even a person who is shy and unpopular in reality can have hundreds of online friends and followers. Teenagers get easily pulled into this abyss of narcissism. They want to get maximum likes, comments or retweets. Social networking is a charade where everyone wants to impress. This throws up strange conundrums in the minds of teenaged girls. They feel self-conscious and pressured to post lots of pictures of them engaging in fun activities or just random photos taken from a webcam, and look good in all of them. Photo editing apps are like oxygen for them. And it does not end at just posting photos. They want to get an inspirational caption, even if it has nothing to do with the picture, and then they crave for likes and comments. They reply to every comment, whether good or bad. We also constantly stalk popular people online, and end up comparing ourselves with them. Everyone gets bitten by the green-eyed monster. We check photos of them partying and holidaying in exotic locations, revealing our worst fault – not being able to be happy for others. This also gives rise to a feeling called “Facebook Envy”.

The pressure to constantly look good has proved very harmful. There has been a rise in cases of depression, attempted suicides, substance abuse, self-harm and eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia. 

Social networking has done more harm than good in some cases. We have forgotten that each person is unique and get depressed instead when we see other people getting what we don’t have. It has been a colossal time waster. So the solution is to limit our time online and instead focus on reality. Online is NOT real time. Most of the content is fake and so are people’s identities. So learn to live IRL (In Real Life) and not make online your life.