We Need To Stop Losing Ourselves To Our Social Media Identities

Our world has lamentably been tainted by consumerism and materialism, and now it is expeditiously getting worse due to injections of self pity that results in issues like emo teens.

This might be an overgeneralization, but it still struck me that we have become progressively exuberant in our burdensome quest to evaluate ourselves, where such an evaluation was never necessary in the past. People used to take themselves as they were. Now thanks to the influence of mass media, demands of the capitalist system and consumerism, we are defining what we are by what we have. (And of course, how much we hate life.) The catalyst for social change was capitalism, but the catalyst for mental change is social media.

I remember when Facebook was just a place to tag your friends. It has now progressed to the Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr era, of which these platforms make life a sham and popularity contest. We are more worried about ourselves and what other people think of us. Popularity and quantity becomes the important thing. We start to look at life and its aspects negatively and take pity on ourselves in all situations.

Gone are the optimistic beliefs of our pioneers. They have been replaced with people who’d rather be sad together than happy together.

In our world today, for some cruel and incomprehensible reason, most of us derive love and happiness from the saddest moments. That to some extent can be rendered valid, but not when it becomes our definitive trait. To the point where everything around us becomes a beacon of complaints ready to explode. To the point where the world is but an evil place, because that’s the cool way of thinking. Why not be happy and be called dumb in the process? I would choose to think that ignorance is bliss.

Whatsapp and similar messenger apps have also become the birthplace of quantity friendships. As a result of the ease of which we can be introduced to new people, our friendships are fast becoming online hook-ups. I use the term hook-ups loosely here, but in any case, when the claptrap hits the wall everything changes.

Because of all these supposedly prodigious inventions, we are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between our real friends and those who are but temporary fillers. We choose to hide behind our screens and contort ourselves into convoluted identities that simply do not represent us.

I miss the days when you liked someone because of who they are, and you appreciated someone because of what they did. Not just sticking to someone because of his/ her online veneer.

But yet with all these in mind, I still can’t let go of social media because that would mean I’m falling behind. So we are caught in this web of ceaseless and tireless pursuits to maintain our friendships, but little do we know that only through talking to a person verbally and interacting in person can we truly deepen our connections, rather than extend them.