The 5 biggest problems with social media

Human beings are social creatures and tend to see thoughts of affirmation or simply validation. More than one-fourth of the world uses social media, mainly,  people between the ages of 15-29 and about 1 million pictures come out in about an hour. Interesting right? We all know the merits of social media like feeling happy, making new friends,"living a social life", getting inspiration, etc... But is social media really worth the "hype"?? Can the merits stated above be actually classified as ‘merits’ OR JUST  DIFFERENT WAY OF SEEING THINGS? Let's see what the main problems with social media are.

Firstly, it is the mindset of ‘perfection’ I.e. looking productive, great and Happy all the time. In my perception, it’s not humanly possible to be perfect. To achieve this, we start hiding our inner feelings and pretend to be happy as we think that's what we are supposed to do. Sad isn't it?

Then comes the problem of comparison, which masks the inspiration in ourselves to be better people. We follow all these Fitness, Fashion, Lifestyle pages and constantly compare our lives to theirs. Should you really be following models for "fitspo"? Fitness is about investing in yourself and following a healthy lifestyle and NOT about attaining photogenicity. It is important to note that models have a casting, directing, editing and management team to make them look their best. Half of these people don't even look as close to the picture in reality. Should we really be comparing ourselves to them?

We look up to a particular person and subconsciously stop working on developing ourselves. We think of momentary gains rather than the big picture. We feel the need to act a certain way and that this way is the only way to live life, not realizing that options do exist and there is always a chance to improve because it's easier to edit a picture to look ‘perfect’ than work hard to do the same.

And finally, in my opinion, the biggest problem with social media is doing all of this and still not getting the" validation" we crave for. This makes us spend hours and hours checking our media to see what other people are doing and mainly, not to forget, the tokens of validation i.e. the likes, comments, and followers.

All these fixated numbers like the number of likes our posts get and how many validators we provoke judgmental mindsets in our heads which lead to self-deprivation and self-harm.

Also, the other obvious evils like cyberbullying and stalking make the social media unsafe as we are literally giving strangers a view of our lives.

Well the obvious answer to all these problems is simply just quitting social media. Isn't it? No

That wouldn't be a smart solution as it's not ending the "validation seeking" mindset. It is just closing a pathway.

 Ending on a positive note, social media is not bad, and by any means, I am not bashing it. If used in the appropriate way, it could be really useful. It all depends on how you play the card.