Hope you are all having a lovely bank holiday Easter weekend whatever you may be doing.
I saw something Kendall Jenner said in an interview (read above) and afterwards I thought to myself THAT IS SO TRUE! We live in a world now that relies so much on social media. We rewatch Snapchat stories over again just to see ‘that again’. We screenshot until our hearts content sharing stuff with friends on WhatsApp. We are all guilty of it.
Us as a generation I’m talking to you reading this post, when was the last time you had a night where you didn’t go on Facebook or Instagram or just didn’t use your phone? I’m not being condescending here by the way, in case you think that. I am asking genuinely……Can you think? I know for me if I’m honest with you guys, I GENUINELY cannot remember the last time. As Kendall said a lot of it is TOTALLY fake. Social media is a very fake world. People only put up what they want you to see. I only share what I want to share. You don’t see me having a massive argument with my mum or when I’m going through a really tough time. Let’s be realistic here, you never see the bad side of someone’s life on social media. I’m not saying every single thing you see is fake. There is a lot of honesty out there too but I’m generalising social media as a whole.
Look personally I am VERY grateful for social media and without it, I wouldn’t have my blog. My thing is though, I am doing my blog nearly six years now and am I devastated I haven’t got to 100,000 followers, NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST. I do my blog and share my posts for people to read and enjoy. I love writing and if you’ve followed me from the start, you’ll know the reason I starting blogging stemmed from my love of writing when I was younger. For me sharing photos on Instagram is just an extension of this.
We have all become so obsessed with our phones/social media and checking who’s doing what, that we have actually stopped enjoying what is happening in our real lives. For example I walked by two girls in Dublin the other day who were clearly out for lunch together and both of them sat their for at least 5 minutes not talking and just looking at their phones the whole time. Another example, I know an Emirates cabin crew who from at a distance looked to be LIVING THE LIFE in Dubai. She was one week in Mauritius and one week in Shanghai but was she happy? No, she was lonely and upset, she was missing family and her boyfriend back home in Ireland and didn’t enjoy her job. From her Instagram, you would never know this but she opened up to me of how it’s an amazing job and she absolutely loved the travelling but it was a very lonely life. I know of another girl who worked in Vietnam & looked like she’s having so much fun and she probably was, but she’s got so homesick she moved back to Ireland after 2 months. What I’m saying is…the social media world we all live in is the filtered existence of all our lives.
If you go to a nightclub or bar, probably over 50% of the people are either taking selfies or swiping right for total strangers on Tinder rather than actually looking at the real life people around them. I recently had an older woman who follows me on Instagram completely BLANK me straight to my face, yet I know she follows me on Instagram all the time. Everyone wants their life to look ‘perfect’. The thoughts of anyone seeing the 120 selfies you took that didn’t make ‘the cut’ for that ONE Instagram photo is mortifying. So many people hate to admit it but for our generation, life is very much surrounded by likes, shares and followers. I’ve seen girls upload Instagram pictures and then delete them the next day if they did not receive a sufficient number of “likes” because god forbid only FIFTY people liked their photo. I actually saw a relatively big blogger do this only this morning and couldn’t understand why.
Our generation and phones come hand in hand. It’s a given. It’s the ‘norm’. Imagine what the young children of today will be like? They have grown up with technology. It’s crazy to think that maybe my unborn child’s generation may never play games outside like Tip the Can or Bulldog, or they will never experience life without social media. I grew up without all this and I’m so happy I did. We didn’t have to think about our next Instagram post or how many LIKES we got on a photo, we just cruised along calling our friends on either our house phone or 3310 after playing a game of snake. Bebo and My Space, then Facebook, then Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat and it continues everyday.
My final words are to not believe everything you see online.
You are only seeing the EDITED VERSION of their life. I think we all need to remind ourselves from time to time that watching other peoples’ post-worthy moments on Instagram or Facebook, that it’s not ALWAYS what it seems. I can 100% guarantee you that my life is not as FABULOUS as it always may seem. I am genuinely just a normal girl who writes a blog. I don’t think or see myself as ‘someone’. I just think of myself as me and anyone that knows me, has met me or has spoken to me will know that.
Remember that perfection does not exist in this world. The meaning of perfection is “the condition, state, or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects.” EVERYONE has flaws and defects to some degree so don’t be too hard on yourself next time you are scrolling through social media and see ‘the perfect couple’ or ‘the model with the perfect body’.
Nobody is perfect. Remember that.
Love Aoibhe xxx
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