The ultimate urge to share everything on social media.
Being curious all the time and having the ability to observe patterns in others and their behavior online has made me understand the effects that social media has on the human mind.
Sharing everything that we do, experience, like, etc. on social media has altered the relationship that we have with ourselves and others.
Considering the observation, what I think is that social media has made us practice distraction so much that we’ve become slaves to our minds. Mind is something that should be controlled by you.
What image are we trying to maintain online, and our sense of “life” offline?
Social media has become a portal to escape from “reality” and it’s so impactful that it is able to alter your character and behavior offline as well.
But what keeps us posting every single thing on social media and Why do we post good things very often and try to hide bad things?
The need for admiration, Inferiority complex, and Escaping from reality, There can be several answers from several perspectives and observations.
In their paper, psychologists Keith Wilcox and Andrew T. Stephen demonstrate that social networks primarily enhance self-esteem for those focused on strong ties during social network use. This momentary increase in self-esteem reduces self-control, leading those focused on strong ties to display less self-control after browsing a social network.
We are in many ways now focusing on portraying and maintaining a positive, really good, and desirable image online, thus moving away from the ground reality.
What is it that drives us to document our lives on social media? Some people do it for small admiration they feel it’s tough to get offline, and some do it to escape from the reality.
However, sourcing our self-esteem and self-worth from social media is far from sustainable.
So, is it really bad to document our lives?
No. but not thinking about what to document is definitely bad.
Documenting your learnings, skills, helpful thoughts and observation isn’t bad. Documenting the process of learning something new isn’t bad either because someone can find it helpful and can learn from you.
Something which is totally inspired by looking at someone else’s desire, something that you’re posting just to show yourself superior or someone else inferior, to achieve a heightened feeling of worth, these superficial means can do more harm than good.