“You never know what someone is going through. Always be nice. "~ Unknown
A few months ago I was in the park and passed a family taking something like vacation photos.
The mother's hair was perfectly combed, Papa was shaved well and looked fairly well-groomed, and four children stood between them smiling – all wearing matching khaki and surprisingly clean white shirts.
I watched the khaki family out of the corner of my eye as I pushed a stroller across the dirt road and thought about what their vacation post might say when my baby yodeled her displeasure at facing the sun.
"Kayden is already reading!" I imagined the beginning of the post. "And Kenzy, Kyra and Kourtney are now fluent in Spanish and Portuguese."
I giggled to myself as I imagined how the post would describe the news about family trips, father's promotion, and the charity that the mother had started helping children in Siberia. I checked all the boxes of a perfect Instagram share when my stream of thoughts was interrupted by a piercing scream and serious excitement.
I looked over and saw a khaki child who was being pulled out of the park pond by a now not so good looking father. Mother screamed and held her white skirt over the mud when the other three children threatened to join the first, who was definitely not clean now.
The photographer, not seeming to know what to do, stepped back from the worsening situation with a frozen smile and a horrified look.
I was far enough away that the scene did not involve me, but when I saw that the mother was sobbing, I immediately felt guilty: they are not a beautiful social media fantasy, they are just a regular family with regular emotional breakdowns like all of us.
My own baby started to cry when I looked over my sunglasses – that's the stuff you don't see on social media, I thought. This is the stuff between the posts.
**
It is important to remember everything that is not shared on social media, otherwise we will forget how humane everyone's life is.
With the advent of social sharing, the building of an alternative universe and the ability to create two-dimensional characters that don't always fit our real life came.
That sounds pretty cumbersome, but it's not really our fault, because social media was not designed as a playful, realistic representation of our person. Many call it a "highlight role" for one reason: Most of us do not document every moment, as the few pictures that you see of couples who fight or people who peck their noses while staring at a screen show .
It's easy to forget that the above moments are as common in many of our lives as the smiling, funny, or thoughtful posts that you're likely to see (or even share) in your feed.
Even as someone who is very careful to be as honest and transparent as possible online, I can see the gap between my online avatar and my actual human life. Sometimes I'm thoughtful, but sometimes I'm blatant. sometimes I'm funny and sometimes I stare at a picture for an hour to find the perfect caption that looks straightforward and effortless.
And even if I recognize this gap between my online and my actual self, I can forget that this also applies to other people. – I have to remember that other people (who may appear together) and "perfect") also live very human, faulty and sometimes boring lives.
I know that it's easy to fall into the comparison game or just feel isolated (especially in times like the present, when so much of our lives are lived on a two-dimensional screen).
For this reason, I share some tips for you to maintain a more positive relationship with social media – and above all a healthy relationship with yourself.
1. Remember that these are highlights, not reality.
Although many of us try to be honest online about our imperfect lives, we can't possibly bring every fact about our reality to the screen (and that shouldn't be the intention.) Not every emotion needs an audience, and It is not always safe or necessary to publicize our entire life. However, when we scroll through pictures of smiling faces and happy families, it is important that we (the social media consumer) remember that we see a highlight role, not the "real" role.
2. Be yourself.
This sounds obvious, but it is easy to incorporate so many filters or changes into our lives that we no longer feel like our real self.
For example, someone told me years ago that I posted "too much" and I believed them; I have decided to reduce my online presence in order not to overwhelm the feed. I would not interact on social media for weeks, trying to create this appearance of detachment and busyness: as if I was just too busy to interact online (when I was really still there I just didn't do it I want you to someone else thinks I'm too much.)
It was then that I started to hate social media and the people on it, and although I initially blamed the platforms, I soon realized that it was my relationship with them that made me feel terrible.
When I realized that it was who I needed to be (or more importantly, who I thought I couldn't be online – myself), I decided that I was done dictating other people leave who I was. I went back to interacting with friends, sharing articles that I found interesting, and commenting on all the posts my heart wanted.
This made it easier for me to connect with people as my "real" self, eliminated the "right" people who thought I was too much, and also helped me to like social media again. I found that the energy had come out of me all the time.
3. Recognize the differences between you and your online person.
Whenever I start to compare my inside with the outside of other people, I think of all the (random) differences that have existed in my own social media posts and my actual life.
For example, a few years ago I went on an amazing international trip where I slept at the foot of the volcanoes in Iceland and hiked to the top of green hills in Scotland.
The pictures and memories that I shared were mostly smiles and beautiful landscapes – but I am very afraid of driving in another country or the tense moments between a close friend and me when we pushed into a motorhome , not described in detail and tried not to grab each cold morning. These omissions were not wrong: they simply weren't the moments that I wanted to share with other people. It is also important to remember that other people do not share their entire story with us.
4. Look regularly from the online world into your five senses.
Sometimes I look up and find that I have been scrolling thoughtlessly on my cell phone for far too long. I recognize these moments because I somehow end up three years deep in the online album of someone I haven't seen in twenty years (or whom I've never met in real life).
There are moments like this when I have all sworn together on social media: Why should we waste precious moments in life staring at other people's schedules that have nothing to do with me?
But I found that this "all or nothing" approach is not sustainable for me either, because the truth is that I really like getting in touch with people online – if I don't mindlessly scroll over rabbit holes , it really is. It's fun to check in with my friends and to interact with the many people I connected to virtually.
The answer I found is to align my online interaction with my real day.
I practice setting a timer when I'm on social media. Quitting my scrolling or comments before the buzzer sounds becomes a game that I play with myself. And when I feel bad looking at other people's posts, I take that as a signal to log out and see where my feet are. As in: Where am I, what can I see, hear or touch?
Checking in with my five senses gives me an idea of what is really in my life and gives me the opportunity to decide whether the interface to the two-dimensional world will serve me at this moment or on that day. Although the answer is sometimes yes, the space to decide what serves and what doesn't serve is the one from which we can enjoy interacting with social media.
5. Imagine your favorite star who is constipated.
Okay, I know that you are a bit crass, but take me with you here: Anyone who seems to have a perfect life is actually still a person like you and me, with moments of definite imperfection at the same frequency .
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Yes, they may have great filters or a house mentioned in the “lifestyles of the rich and famous”, but I guarantee that sometimes they will sit around and peck their noses at one point or another and have broken probably have people who watch them longingly (and with a sense of comparison).
I will never forget getting into a group of very wealthy friends when I was young and then wondering how they jealously compared themselves to even richer people. I was amazed at the houses and bank accounts that they took for granted while telling me that they made fun of their privileged school because they didn't have a garage full of antique cars or their own yacht like other (wealthier) classmates .
When I lifted my jaw off the floor, I found that the comparison has no end, be it in real life or online: the key is to take a deep breath and recognize everything that we already need to be grateful for and remember then how similar our humanity is among the fancy filters and thoughtful subtitles.
Everyone does the best they can – and that looks different online for different people. We are only responsible for how it looks (and feels) in our world.
**
I hope the khaki family got a picture for their Christmas card in the park that day, or maybe they exchanged their perfectly made smile for a few muddy and imperfect real life shots. I was distracted by my own crying baby and haven't seen her shot develop, but I'm sure that whatever happened didn't end up online. When I finally calmed my own daughter down, we laid our stomach in the grass and I decided to take a picture.
"So grateful," I labeled the post and looked at our happy faces that beamed at me from the country of social media. "And constipated," I added with a smile, and invited my daughter back into the car to return home to our completely imperfect and very real, actual life.
About Melissa Pennel
Melissa Pennel is a Northern California life coach, writer, speaker, and podcaster. If she doesn't make faces for her baby or play lasers with her cats, she can write on her blog or talk about life with meaning in her podcast "Follow your fire: life, work and purpose" (to be found on her website here). )
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