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.
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