Social Media? Or Self Loathe? Sorry They Both Are Same.

From the time living organisms have inhabited Earth, socializing has been the pivotal factor in sustaining and developing their race. Though modes of interaction and the idea of development differ for each species, humans after their evolution have been at the pinnacle of socializing. In the 21st century this has been catalysed by the arrival of social media.

Social media has developed a network of social interactions and personal relationships. Apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp have enabled easy, reliable and fast modes of socializing. These platforms have not only aided us with better communications with our acquaintances but also with connecting and having an insight into the lives of other humans. Rise of influencers, models, film stars can be seen as perfect examples of increased human interest in observing and interacting with each other.

We, as the first generation of humans being exposed to social media, are vulnerable to the effects that social media possesses. This is because of the inexperience and absence of historical references to be taken into account and analysed to understand the different aspects of socializing through these mediums. Now being the pioneer generation, we are burdened to face the varied consequences of its use. Being entitled with loads of cheap data and unrestricted information, humans are undergoing a phase of transition.

There have been transitions on many aspects; here we try to focus on the individualistic impacts on self-esteem and self-confidence. On the surface, we do get a positive vibe of its impact on humans as we see a collection of confidence boosting videos, life hack articles, inspirational thoughts and many more. But if the impacts would be an iceberg, these motivational impacts comprise of the iceberg visible above the water’s surface while the major part under the water, being unclear and unanalysed.

When we look on the total time spent on these platforms, a major percentage of it goes in viewing posts of different people, stories of influencers and artists with their lavish daily routines or of their friends who would have been travelling, having a nice meal or just chilling with their families. FOMO is one of the outcomes that has been taking attention nowadays but an another outcome is the increase in rates of people experiencing self-loathe.

Self-loathe is a state of low self esteem and self hatred which people suffer with but generally see it as symptoms of depression and thus neglect it. Who takes depression seriously though? We need to understand that how scrolling through your feed for hours, checking back and again status updates is drifting us towards a state of being prejudiced against ourselves.

First the tendency to relate and compare is asserting an undue pressure on us. Liking a post won’t be tedious for you but the emotions triggered are always enormous. Either it be a film star or an acquaintance, we tend to relate our lives with them as a matter of fact we followed them surely because of an attachment or just because we are influenced by them. Comparison exists because of this relation; as we get to know things we don’t have, resources we are missing out, places we haven’t visited yet; dishes we never ate and the relations we never had. We go on to compare ourselves with aimless and random parameters which don’t have stands in determining our potential. We tend to create false justifications for ourselves with these vague reasons for our failures, lurking or procrastinations. Initially it may serve as justifications for our state but gradually these become our habit and the stage of self doubt begins. Failures go on to continue as procrastination never goes off nor we tend to find solutions for them. We reach to a stage for we don’t even treat our real problems as a matter of concern and a challenge to accept, we starting judging our capabilities and begin to find flaws in ourselves comparing with the others lifestyle as perceived on social media. We start spending more and more time on liking, sharing and commenting on posts of people who tend to show or have lives as we dreamt for ourselves and get into this endless loop of wasting time, deteriorating health and forgetting goals.

Second is the increased false expectation. At first it can be viewed as something positive for an individual as increased expectation will force him to work hard, be organized and utilize time to the fullest. The problem arises when the inspirations of these expectations come from social media which can be referred as vague expectations. The difficulty today is the mindset that following prominent people, viewing their stories, life habits and things they do gives us inspiration in some way or the other way. As a consequence we start demanding more of ourselves to do the various activities people we follow are doing today but the nuance being that different people are doing different things and not a single human doing everything. As we aren’t trained to handle this information overload we are pushed in a haphazard lifestyle with aims being creating stories inspired from a influencer, posting stuffs that reflect we have something new today and sharing posts that are trending and need to be told to the world to state my credibility of being an updated human. At the end of the day, we sum up with topics we tangentially know, habits that strived for that day and information that is completely useless to our lifestyle. This is the point when we end being depressed with the thought that we have wasted the day with no productivity and state ourselves as incapable of completing things as the one’s whom we admire and jealousy of others being more privileged than us as a result of not gaining stories as they do. These all sum to a single state which is a strong feeling of self hatred, i.e., self loath.