Is Social Media Making you Unhappy?
My personal story.
Is social media truly an escape from all our problems, or is social media also one of them? The answer to this question differs for everyone; however, according to Lanier, social media is the root cause of some of our most significant problems. In the seventh argument of his book titled “Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now,” Lanier discusses how unhappiness is a common result of social media usage. It is a typical social media result because everyone wants to be like someone or the “perfect” person. It is causing you to become fake or played by either your fellow peers, celebrities, or these big named companies. You feel unhappy because this is not you. Our generation is very dependent on social media, making us feel like we NEED social media to connect and interact with one another. Social media is commonly seen as an outlet to achieve part of a social experience and collaborate with users’ posts and accounts. However, social media isn’t at all what it was meant to be portrayed as. Instead, social media constantly fuels jealousy, bad experiences, and manipulation, and it has only gone downhill from the start.
Social media is used every day by most people. I say most because Jaron Lanier, author of the title Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts, believes that there are multiple reasons why we should not have social media. One of his arguments being Social Media makes you unhappy. Lanier’s essay, Argument 7 Social Media is Making you Unhappy, talks about why he believes social media makes you sad. Those reasons being judgment and anxiety caused by others on social media, cultural standards, manipulation, and more. I agree with Lanier to an extent.
Girls feel the need to edit their photos to have the “perfect” picture. Research all points to the “pressures of social media were at least partially responsible for this unhappiness” of not being their definition of pretty. “Selfies have broadened traditional beauty standards” because everyone wants to show off to a bigger audience now, which can cause all kinds of anxiety and sadness because you are willing to do anything for that “perfect” picture. In America, plastic surgery is common, and data points to “55 percent of American facial plastic surgeons have seen patients who wanted procedures to look better in selfies.” Even people I know today have mixed feelings about social media. My grandmother, who uses Facebook to connect and see what her family is doing, is happy with social media. All she does is look at the pictures of her grandchildren and family. My teenage sister, who thankfully is not into social media as much as her peers, is greatly affected by social media and now thinks she is “ugly” because of teenage standards. Everyone is affected by it in different ways, including myself.
As an artist, I have drawn social media’s effects onto a piece, and the primary colors are blues. Which represents the stress, anxiety, and sadness technology and others can bring to you. I drawn this for a class but also to show my feelings toward social media personally. In middle school, all I could ever think about was the status and wanting to be popular. That mentally put me down, and I misrepresented myself. I was scared to post what I wanted to post. I had a fear of embarrassment and not being liked by everyone else. Which all lead me to a depressing state, and others would feed on that. Yet that pushed me to delete all social media and be on it way less. I then realized that I was happy without social media, and I should not care about others’ comments.
I disagree with Lanier to an extent, as I mentioned earlier. Overall, I agree that social media makes you unhappy, yet there are different approaches to stop this unhappiness. You can delete all of your social media, or you can take breaks from it. I understand where Lanier believes why social media only makes you upset. His main idea of BUMMER representing what the internet does to you and how manipulation has taken over you. As a girl, I understand that I am not perfect, and that will make me unhappy. Wanting to be like online celebrities, letting it get to my head is where I will be manipulated and sad.
To understand my viewpoint, you must know that I am not addicted to social media. I do not share all my ideas and thoughts online. That is because I have not let BUMMER control my life. That is why I have so many different emotions when I do social media. It can make me unhappy when I am on it too long, or something happened to my friends. It makes me happy because I can connect with my friends and family. It can make me mad when I do not agree with someone, but what matters is I have not let social media manipulate me.
You do not need to delete social media unless you are addicted to it, and you are at the point where it is inside your head. Social media can be manipulative if you let it control you. If most people did not set standards or judged, social media might be in a better spot. Like how I did, everyone needs to realize to move on from the comments and be yourself. If you take a break from social media, you can see the world’s true beauty and not from a phone screen. That will make you truly happy.