Why Your Social Media Following Should Not Determine Your Self-Worth
By Sara Uzer
If you didn’t post multiple “before & after” body photos on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter….did you really lose the weight?
It’s no secret that the millennial generation today has an obsession with social media. When something good happens in our life, one of our first instincts is to share it with our followers and Facebook friends. Of course, we would never explicitly admit that we enjoy bragging about our accomplishments, so therefore this is our way to “subtly” let the world know what we have achieved.
Of course, I can’t lie and say that I refuse to take part in these rituals. I’ve posted a Facebook status about my 4.0 for the semester, as well as snap chatted a picture of my recent offer of employment letter. The bottom line is, we all do it. The earliest indication that I saw of this was back in my senior year of high school, when we were all getting into colleges. It became an unspoken ritual to post what school you got into, even if it was early in the application process, and you really had no intention of going there.
You might read all of this and think, so what? Our generation is fixated on posting updates via social media, and there’s really nothing that’s going to change that any time soon. However, my intention of writing this is not to expose the need to change our ways. Instead, it’s to call attention to the fact that this constant need to show and tell the virtual world about our triumphs causes the actual accomplishment to lose value.
The victory that one feels becomes less about the achievement itself, and more about the amount of “likes” and congratulatory compliments via Facebook comments. So by all means, when you finally get that job at the law firm that you’ve had your heart set on, go ahead and post a Facebook status about it. However, don’t let the confidence boost come from the online feedback. Instead, we should gradually learn to feel that sense of fulfillment within ourselves. Knowing that we tackled a challenge head-on and came out successful? That should be accomplishment enough, social media bragging aside.