The Unreal World of Social Media

The Unreal World of Social Media

We engage with social media at a greater frequency than ever before. As we sift through photos of children, commentaries about food, explosive reactions on current political events, and the plethora of pictures of cats and dogs and of our friends who are always on the go travelling here-and-there. How we’d wish we were in their place too. But all too often, the increased social media exposure does pose the question: how accurate is the information that we see on social media? Or more specifically, how honest are people when posting on social media?

In the case of Dutch student Zilla Van Den Born, her travelling experience was no exception to her honesty on social media. Having carefully and precisely detailed her entire 42 day Southeast Asian trip through Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, to her friends and family on social media, complete with loads of pictures, videos and commentaries. Stunning vista’s, amazing experiences, but was it legit? Zilla finally came clean and explained to everyone that her whole vacation one just one big social experiment to prove that social media has the power to create a completely wrong reality of the world. She did everything from the comfort of her own apartment, with a little help from Photoshop.

The real truth is that people tend to lie on these platforms. Although selective self-presentation and lying on social media may not seem like a surprise or even a big deal, it can affect us greatly. Why? Humans are naturally social creatures thus crave relationships and social interaction. The social interaction and feeling a sense of belonging to a community are two of the most important predictors of psychological and physical health. We always want to feel connected to people no matter if they are our friends, family or even celebrities. However, as human beings, we also do have the propensity to trust that other people are being honest with us.

But then again, who are we to judge how other people represent themselves on social media? To make matters more complicated, when we internally believe that what we see in social media is true and relevant to us, we are more likely to compare ourselves to it in an internal effort to evaluate ourselves against those around us.

F.O.M.O or (Fear of Missing Out) after seeing a post from another person. We would feel envious as social media jams us with unsolicited reminders of the seemingly perfect lives of others. With each passing day, it also becomes increasingly harder to recognize the augmented and edited version of people’s otherwise ordinary lives. It is our innate desire to be heard where social media has given all of us a voice. It gives us the power to construct an ideal identity, over which we have total control. As social media makes people obsessed with the aesthetics of the perfect picture and keeping up with the latest trends of posing and appearances, no matter the cost it does to us.

The lie that social media promotes is becoming part of the augmented realities in which people embrace their ideal persona in order to keep up with the “Social Media Lie”. Consequently, it’s always best to remind ourselves that what we see on social media is not an accurate picture of reality. We should not compare ourselves to images of friends, colleagues or celebrities. But always be reminded that it’s just a snapshot of their life, one they want YOU to SEE.

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