Social Media – An Escape or a Platform of Lies?

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This morning I woke up, looking flawless, kissed my husband and stepped out of bed, overjoyed to start another day. As I walked through my immaculate home, I heard my children, already dressed and ready for school, talking about how much they loved one another. I cooked them a healthy breakfast and prepared their lunches in bento boxes, with fun shapes and clever notes. I dropped them off at school, where they are star students, always get honor roll and never get in trouble. I arrived back to my home office, where my husband had already prepared my coffee in a mug with a woman-empowering saying on it and got my mom-boss on. I sipped my coffee, made reservations for our next over-the-top vacation and dreamt about how perfect my life really is. If you were to scroll through my social media accounts, that’s probably what you think my days are like. Because like most of us, I’m not telling the whole truth through my pictures and posts. I’m only telling half of the story.

When’s the last time you were completely honest on social media? I’m not talking about your political views, how much your kids mean to you or telling everyone how much you enjoyed your last meal… I’m talking about being honest about your everyday life. I hate to tell you this, but there’s a 99% chance that social media has made you into a liar. Or, at the very least, someone who omits much of the truth.

Social media has become a place where we show off the good and leave out the heartache, the mess and the struggles. We post pictures of our beautiful kids, our perfect homes and our fancy vacations but in reality, behind the scenes, there is so much you don’t see.  The other side of our home is a mess, our kids never listen and we are yelling more than we’d care to admit.  To the outside world, we are living the perfect life. We can custom design how we want people to think we are living, because that’s what social media has become. Likes and views have become our validation.

When we get in front of the camera, we are smiling, laughing and having the time of our lives. But there are days when we feel sad and nothing can go right, no matter what we do. Our kids won’t listen, our home is a mess, we are behind on our bills and we may even be having marital problems.  No matter how tough life gets, we still go out of our way to show everyone how perfect we want them to think we really are. Because these days it doesn’t matter what life is really like, it matters how people think you are living.

I don’t care how much money you make, or how perfect your life may seem, none of us are as perfect as we portray through social media. Our lives are chaotic, we have issues and the majority of us just don’t talk about them. We’ve learned to manipulate angles to make ourselves and our home look better than they really are. We live to pretend.

Social media will never change because it’s our escape. The fact is, we don’t want to read about people’s marital problems, or see pictures of their messy homes. We want to see the fantasy of how our lives could be. Sadly, social media has given us a platform to create an image that we can probably never attain.  It’s more about who is living the better life, or who can put on the best show.

So what does our future look like if we keep going on like this? I think first, we need to stop living online and start living our lives. Put the phone down. Don’t worry about how many likes or views you get, but instead, enjoy the moment. Don’t be afraid to talk about your problems with those you love and trust. They won’t think less of you.  In fact, you may find that they need to talk about something as well. Keeping things bottled up and pretending all the time is not going to make your life better. Living your life and enjoying what you do have, will.

What are your feelings on social media? Comment below and let me know!

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