Yes scam! Social media has scammed all of us.
It has lead us to believe that everyone is living a full, happy and exciting life while we sit home with a tub of ice cream in our sweats looking across the kitchen table at someone we'd rather not be with! This is simply not the truth for anyone. We all have trials and tribulations along side our joys and successes. That is the human experience. Yet rarely do we let people in to see that side of us instead portraying the life we want not the life we have. And honestly, social media is not always the best venue for airing our dirty laundry or disclosing our deepest pain. But neither is it the place for putting the finishing touches on our masks. All too often we post a “mask” status - “Here with the love of my life!” Meanwhile if you had the money you'd divorce the dude! Or “Great weekend with my sibs!” Meanwhile no one talks to each other all year and that “Sib Weekend” is an obligation you dread.
I was thrilled to hear Prince Harry recently talk about how he and his brother, Prince William, never talking about their mother's passing instead hiding their pain in the silence. This is a very common belief – If I don't talk about it, it won't hurt. He went on to talk about social media and how it made him feel as though there was something wrong with him “... It's always sold as though everybody else's life is perfect, that's the problem and therefore you think if everyone else's life is perfect there must be something wrong with me.” How many of us have at one time or another felt the same way. We scroll the pictures and statuses of friends and family counting likes and comments feeling alone and isolated.
Truth be told – no one is happy all of the time, no one is thrilled about every aspect of their lives, and no one has 750 friends! So be kind to yourself. Recognize that in general people would rather post their mask than post their true self, they would rather live through a photo filter than live the raw image. Life is not about accumulating social media likes, shares and comments but about developing true friendships that don't require a filter.
