The Instagram Life

 

“All you need is love. And a tiara. And a tub full of ice-cream.”

Oh boy! It’s morning! Flick-flick-flick, on goes the phone….Hello FB, Instagram, Snapchat and I’m in the middle of a bright, beautiful, and perfect world, where everyone has flat stomachs, boundless energy, flawless skin, fabulous vacations and parties!

This is the life we all want to live…this pixie-dusted, powdered perfection! It demands instant attention and our rational mind flies out of the window replaced by, “I want, I want”!

Then I look around me, my life, my skin, my home, my food is different, it’s not perfect, it’s real. But is that acceptable??!

I think we are doing each other a disservice when we post these declarations of beauty in pictures…the selfies, the clothes, this curated life…it’s harmful. With social media everyone is our friend and everyone seems to have a better life.

But I notice that this breathtaking image of someone in a bikini under a waterfall, this flawless spa-inspired avocado salad alongside an artistic smoothie….it’s all the same…it’s been done a million times before!! So originality takes a step back and we enter the age of copy-catting!

This begs the question, are we living for the approval of strangers?

Is receiving an online ‘like’ enough of a dopamine hit? And if we were to peer into these strangers lives would they all be successful, attractive and in charge?

What we’re probably unaware of is that with over a billion users, social media is shaping our lives in ways we cannot easily identify…our self-image, the things we value, our ideas of beauty, who we admire and how we spend our time. We end up living through a camera because “it looks good”!

This makes me think of the difference in our lives before the Internet invasion….I think we were encouraged to think because of fewer instant distractions, almost forced to think and in contrast, social media is an experience, a fast paced experience which is more a reaction to things and requires no deep thought. It’s a constant stimulation that forces us to switch devices, jump from app to app and spread our focus too thinly. Phew! Causes an information overload!

I’m waiting for the day we realise that being chained to our phones is a low-status activity, viewed as similar to smoking. I’m also waiting for the day when dopamine fasting becomes a trend so the natural level of dopamine is reset in our brains. We have the power to take back our brains and in the process restore some balance to our mental health.

Perhaps we could simply let ourselves get bored!

So let’s do it….but don’t bring your phone along!

Until next time…

Cheers!