I was very lucky that from a young age my parents advised me to not have Facebook until I was 13 and Instagram until I was 14. At the time I remember being really annoyed, I had no clue what they were but when my peers would laugh and talk about what happened on Facebook and Instagram I was curious to find out what happened online and what the sites were about.
Looking back I am grateful for my parents but at the time I remember feeling frustrated and eventually at 14 I got Instagram and Snapchat as a way of going against my parents. It was teenage rebellion.
What then proceeded was what I would call; the Discovery Period.
Now this Discovery Period meant that I was suddenly exposed to all the things people had been talking about, and more. I remember seeing these gorgeous photos and thinking no way was this an actual human. But I saw the appeal, and I realized what it meant to be ‘popular’ and ‘pretty’. I doted on Instagram models and obsessed over every Kardashian picture, sometimes even going on the same profiles several times a day to see if a new picture had been put up. I would refresh the pages to check the likes and comments of particular pictures, and I even learnt the time zones of America so that I knew when they would be awake to post.
I won’t lie, this was all very exciting. And I loved every minute of checking and seeing the new fashions and the makeup and hair. In some way the Discovery Period gave me a greater understanding of how to make myself attractive, and what styles suited me, giving me confidence. But it also programmed me into seeing what was attractive. It “taught” me that being skinny, tall, wearing heavy makeup and skimpy clothes was what equated to beauty.
Then came the Application Process. I made a separate Instagram account and intended to put up sexier and prettier pictures. Using a separate account with a made up name that meant that others wouldn’t find out at school, but gave me a sense of popularity all the same. I used #like4like and #follow4follow. It was a public account and I felt a sense of pride and even acceptance. But these were misplaced feelings. I ended up deleting the account after about a month and instead just used the like for likes on my own account whilst also making it public.
Every picture I took would go through a very thorough process of editing, but the posting wasn’t the end. I learnt that you had to advertise yourself, so I would spend hours locked in the toilet just going through hashtags and commenting on people’s profiles to like my pictures. And getting 200 odd likes made me feel worthy, it actually gave me hope. This went on for probably 6 months until I got a horrible comment and this woke me up a bit and I immediately did a deep clean of my Instagram account.
I put Instagram to bed for a while and instead focused my efforts on Snapchat, and ended up in some rather questionable positions with boys. Thankfully, and I guess I’ve only got God to thank for this, I never ended up sending anything that I regret. I also being consumed by celebrity culture, reading several articles about the same thing, tracking the movements of every mainstream and LA celeb out there. I got bored easily, but as soon as I wouldn’t check for even one day I felt as if I had missed out on so much. It was that awful relationship with something where you don’t want it when you have it, but as soon as you have it you don’t want it.
I was lost. I was in so deep with the social media storm that I couldn’t get out. Social Media has succeeded, I had succumb to what it had set out to do.
Social Media 1000 - Me 0
I don’t even want to think about the amount of hours that I have lost being on social media over the years but I know I will be ashamed. I have lost probably months of my life from looking at pictures, and watching videos and reading reports of people who quite frankly I will never meet, and whom will never affect my life in a significant way.
The past year I have been fighting back against the social media tide. Ready to defy what we, as the younger generation, is almost expected to do. I no longer want to take a picture just for the sake of putting it up on Instagram. I want to take a photo so I can look back in a decades time and remember the happy memories.
And I want to be PRESENT IN THE PRESENT, or I’ll never get that time back again.
Comments