Social Meditation

"She's engaged?! How is she engaged! We graduated together and she's ENGAGED?! I don't understand how that's possible. *scrolls down* Wait, is that his kid? He has a kid... I had a piece of bread for breakfast and he is responsible for a tiny little human's life???"

I'm not usually one to stress out over not having my life together, because after all I'm only nineteen. But when I was sitting with my friend between classes listening to her as she scrolled through her Facebook feed it really got me thinking about the less obvious effects of online friendships. 

I’ll be the first one to say that I could care less about half of the people I’m “friends” with on Facebook, as bad as that sounds. But, when you’re like me and you graduate high school with 700 people in your class alone, it’s hard to maintain friendships with more than just a few people when you go off to college.  But that’s the thing about social media today - it’s a lot easier to keep up with people without actually having to talk to them, and for some people that seems to cause serious problems.

In Lindsay Lavine’s article, she brings these problems to light.  Facebook is a place where people go to showcase only the best moments of their lives. Oh, you got a promotion? Need to go update that status! On an expensive vacation at a five star resort? Need to publicize it with a picture! – Obviously you want to be happy for them, but it’s also hard to not compare yourself, and your life, to what all of your “friends” are showcasing online.  The important thing to remember however, is that the things we don't see online are the same things we would never post about ourselves: family drama, problems at work, insecurities, etc. And these are the same things that all of these “perfect” people we see online are going through too.

One of the most important things to remember when you’re scrolling through your newsfeed seeing pictures and posts about how awesome people’s lives are is that everyone is at a different place in their life as well.  It’s not fair to go online and compare your Chapter One to somebody else’s Chapter Twenty. What we need to do instead of comparing ourselves with others is refocus this energy to ourselves, and what matters to us, rather than what we’re not doing in regards to what someone else is.