Do You Need Social Media Validation?

Social media is such a curse at times.

It is 3 in the morning..I can’t sleep so I’m on my phone. I browse through Instagram accounts and the process continues like a chain reaction; one account to another then another and another!

I occasionally end up on someone’s account and I don’t know her. “Wow! She is pretty”, I tell myself. This girl is extremely pretty and it’s been just two pictures and I find myself wishing I could be a little like her. I want to dress like her, smile like her, photograph my food like she does. Then there is this other person, travelling and making the best of life. Paris- Barcelona- Venice- Maldives- Greece; he has been everywhere and God! Those pictures! “You have a terribly boring life” I tell myself as I continue to stare at the beautiful landscapes in those fancy pictures.

This feeling of being like somebody when you are not even aware who you are wishing to be is negative. It is toxic.
It’s funny how easy it is to get validation on social media. Click a fancy picture, apply a few filters, add trendy hashtags and voila! It rains likes, people envy you and your life.

Don’t get me wrong, I am one among the crowd..pretty active on social media. I have all the major social connects on my phone and I spend a substantial amount of my time on these platforms… completely drowned in all that it has to offer.

The point is, my self esteem or happiness does not in any way depend on it anymore. I learned my lesson quite early.

I remember, it was the era of Orkut and I was in high school. Orkut was the thing then. Adding albums after albums, I remember sending scraps to my friend who lived next door. Both of us glued to our desktops. We were so fascinated by the trend back then that sometimes we would sit together and write each other testimonials (remember the testimonials section on Orkut? it used to be my favorite!). Every time someone wrote me a testimonial I would read it ten times and smile to myself. It felt good…all that validation!

It took me quite some time to realize where I was going with all of this and that it needed to stop. I had a really fulfilling life outside of it.

There are people who appreciate and love me genuinely, way more than the people who wrote me half baked testimonials; people who did not know the real me. Something so far away from my soul and my real life should not impact my self perception in any way, at all. Like everything else, these media platforms have have their positives and negatives. They have so much to offer! Pick what you like; indulge; have fun; drown if you wish to.

There is just one thing not to do- Do not let your self worth depend on it in any way. Virtual likes and opinions do not define who you are.

 

Image Credits: Bitmoji