Social media affecting our lives

Social media has become an important part of our lives lately. It is surely a boon as it allows you to connect with your friends and family, provides you with useful information and lets you stay updated with latest happenings around the world and trends. It’s a source of income for a lot of social media influencers lately.

But there is a flip side to all this as well. A lot of the latest studies show that social media is becoming a reason for so many mental health illnesses, depression being one of them. Let’s have a look at how this is happening.

Absent from the present

If you look around, it could be at home, a get-together, or a couple out on a date, we all remain glued to our phones. We are more concerned about the activities on social media rather than being where we are. We are constantly thinking about what next to post instead of focusing on the person we are with or eating our lunch.

Loss of Human Connection

When we meet our friends, a lot of times, more than knowing what’s happening in each other’s lives, we are more concerned about clicking a perfect selfie and putting nice hashtags. We are more of friends with our blue light rectangular screen than the people we post pictures with. We would have an idea about their online personality, rather than their real-life personas. This has been one of the reasons for arguments amongst people, as we avoid the person sitting next to us for checking our phones.

Virtual Reality

Most people have an alter ego through their social media accounts. They make their life to appear picture perfect, making other’s envy them. From putting check-ins at expensive restaurants to posting a picture of the top brand clothes, they try every possible way to make their feed look trendy and attractive. It’s like hiding the real-life picture and living it with so many filters.

Self Esteem

People often accept others’ virtual life as their actual. More than concentrating on themselves, they keep updated with others’ trips and relationship status, ending up making comparisons with them. This makes them feel bad about their own life and hence affecting their self-esteem. They feel worthless and start doubting their abilities and approach towards life. We remain unhappy. We become obsessed with trying to post an aesthetically appealing picture just to have a validation that people like us. Our existence is so much hanging on the likes and dislikes on our posts.

Too much information

Kim Kardashian, Hollywood’s famous reality star’s Paris robbery is one of the best examples of this. We make several posts throughout our day, providing the outside world too much information about ourselves, which is not ideal in terms of our safety. The other person knows our location that exact minute.

Procrastination