Sunday, November 17, 2013

The dangers of social media

Tänään on vaan englanniksi tekstiä. Olen kirjotellut muutamana päivänä sosiaalisesta mediasta ja siitä miten se vaikuttaa mun ja muiden elämään. Ois kiva saada jotain palautetta. Mitä mieltä itse olette?

Today I'm just going to post in English for a change! He're some thoughts about social media. I've been writing this for a a few days and I hope I could get some feedback from you guys! And maybe some opinions about this topic?

Why do I and almost every single person in the world live their lives in social media? I've lately been thinking about how wrong it is that real people have to have virtual lives, and sometimes the virtual one even turns out to be the one we worry about the most. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blogger, Google+, Formspring, Pinterest, Tumblr, Flickr, MySpace… The list is never ending. And there’s more to come; let’s face it, our world is getting more and more internet-centered by the day.

I check my Facebook page many times a day. That’s alright, there’s really not that much going on and I don’t think it’s a way to losing my real life. However, the thought that I am there, that my whole entire life is shown on a platter to everyone I know, or don’t know, is scary. My life looks perfect when I see it there, as if everything in my life would be in order. Sometimes I see myself as I see myself in Facebook; if I have a lot of likes and comments, it makes me feel like my life is somehow better than if I had none. That girl who smiles in my profile picture is definitely me, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. When someone who doesn’t know me sees my pictures they must think “Hey, she’s got a perfect life”. How would they know? The life that Facebook represents is not real; it’s just a page where we can show ourselves as the best version of ourselves. All the pictures have to be perfect. We can’t put blurry, failed pictures in there, even if our lives were be blurry and failed. What if someone would judge our perfect selves and find out that we are, in fact, normal? That we’re not perfect and we make mistakes? Our Facebook page represents the image we want to have, but we what we don’t own. All this would be fine if we would be satisfied to just have our information up there, but we also want to know everything about everyone at every minute. Who’s dating who? I wouldn’t know this if I hadn’t seen it on Facebook this morning. Seems like it has become a necessity to have something other than our real life to keep us happy.





I remember the times when I was little and I had nothing like Facebook or Instagram to connect with others.  I just had myself. Back then, life was just life. I didn’t feel like I was on a platform being watched by others. No one knew what I was doing, so it didn’t matter if I really was doing something or not. It was totally okay to just be and enjoy life. Back then, if I lost contact with a friend, I wouldn’t know what was going on with them anymore and that was fine. It didn’t matter, because meeting people and letting them go was just a part of our lives. Today, we don’t have to let go of people, because we can see their lives easily even if we don’t even talk to them. If I see a lot of posts from someone I might even forger that I haven’t actually seen this person; I’ve just read all the information from social media. Having information for other people to see is sometimes a good thing, but when it gets in the way of normal communication, it’s a problem.





With social media, life is complicated because we can know what happens everywhere. This leads to the fact that other people can also see what we’re up to. What if I don’t post any pictures?  Do they think I don’t have a life? Do they think I’m a loner with no friends? Many of us constantly think about what other people think about us. Do they think I’m cool or not? What could I post to make them change their minds? The worst thing is that people easily believe what they see on social media. They are ready to accept the facts without even meeting the person first; to judge them without getting to know them. No wonder we care so much about our appearance in social media. When you meet a person, don’t you immediately ask whether they’re on social media? I do, I want to know if they’re on Facebook. If they are, I will go and see their pictures and their other posts. In a few seconds, I either accept the person to be completely normal or a little odd. It’s so wrong, but it’s a habit I can’t easily put aside. Of course, the odd people can later turn out to be the best people and the normals can definitely surprise you in a bad way. I do know that nothing can be seen in Facebook; that nothing can be trusted. But in reality, to not evaluate people based on social media is nearly impossible.

I truly have a love-hate relationship with social media. Sometimes it makes me feel good about myself, and to be honest it is fun to post pictures so that my friends can see them. It unites people, brings them together. When something pops on my from page, maybe a picture from 3 years ago, I can’t stop smiling at the memories of that time. Still, sometimes it just makes me feel insecure. I get the need to compare my life to other people’s lives, and seeing the happiness of strangers makes me jealous. I don’t like the fact that there’s something other than my actual life that I have to keep up with at all times; it shouldn’t be like that. Life shouldn’t be like that.


What comes to the future, I have a wish. I wish that social media would slowly start disappearing; I wish it would be just a phase in the history of human kind; one of those that people first get excited about but later they get bored and find another thing to be excited about. Sooner or later people would realize that they love living so much that they don’t want to waste a minute of it. Everyone from children to adults would understand that internet is not a place to live, and that the things they post are not signs of how good they are. That’s only defined by how they choose to live their life. I don’t think I’m going to get what I wish for though. We are human, and no matter how well we know that something’s not good for us, we stick with it if it makes us feel good about ourselves and our place in the social world.


Babies in Egypt have been named "Facebook" and "Twitter"


Pictures: 


5 comments:

  1. I super Loved all of your post :)
    Would you like to Follow Me on GOOGLE/GFC?
    I'll gonna follow back as well. Its:

    www.zelaldecoa.com

    xx,You're Fab!:*

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  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  3. Hi, I really enjoyed reading this. I loved your sentece: We can’t put blurry, failed pictures in there, even if our lives were be blurry and failed.
    x

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  4. thank you! I'll go check out your blog :)

    ReplyDelete