How Social Media tricks you comparing your life with others

 

Social media use has been increasing day by day. It has become an integral part of our lives. Hardly anyone of us left any day of our life without using our phone and scrolling social media. Although there are many positive sides of social media there are also drawbacks like social comparisons. See, we humans are social creatures. Its our inherent tendency to constantly compare our life with other people. If someone is lower in social status than us it gives a boost to our self esteem where as if we found someone higher than us in social status, our self esteem lowers down. Now this social comparison is continuous process which always going on in the back of our mind. And this same happens when we use social media. But the difference is that on social media we have endless number of people whom we can compare our life with in comparison to real world where we hardly in touch of more than 10-15  people at a time.

How social media is dangerous to self esteem

With so many people to compare our brain is already overloaded with constant comparisons. Also on social media we have more chances of finding someone with higher social status which results in hurting our self esteem. This is because everyone presents their ideal life on social media. Everyone post pictures and photos of vacations, parties and good times. So we feel like everyone is enjoying life other than us. Moreover with so many photo and video editing tools available

How it will affect our mental health

As I stated above that with every upward comparison, means by comparing your life with people having higher social status, hurts our self esteem. Every time we see anyone with better money, career & social life than us, it lowers down our self esteem. Lower self esteem means lower confidence. Lower confidence means lack of motivation to do anything. Which further results to anxiety and depressions. And if this cycle of scrolling and beating your self esteem goes for long it will result in serious depression problems.

Another problem with social media is the fake body images and the wrong idealization of beauty. Influencers uses so much makeup and camera filters while creating videos. Also there are some male influencers who build body by taking steroids. But they pretend that they are natural bodybuilders. In this way these influencers set beauty and body standards which are not real anyway. Their subscribers and fans follows them blindly. And they get several mental health issues when they were not able to match those beauty standards.

Final thoughts

Since social media had become a part of our life over the years. Its near to impossible to not use it in today's time. But its my recommendation to limit your time using it. Don't use social media for more than 1 hour 1 day. That's all you need to do. You need to understand that scrolling social media is only and entertainment. And you can entertain yourself for 1 hour, for 4 hours or even 10 hours, it does not make any difference. There is no limit how much time you give for entertainment, you will never feel enough. The second thing you have to do is to consider social media as only an entertainment tool and not a life tool. Live in the real world. Take time to talk with your family, go out & meet people. Collect experiences, doesn't matter good or bad, but go through experiences. Because that is why we are here. God doesn't sent us on earth to stick to a screen in one corner of your tiny room. Enjoy your human experience by exploring the real world.