Social media. At most.

I see social media to open up a lot of windows of new business and growth opportunities, to escape the world and also to laugh a little, but as you may gather from my other posts I have a love-hate relationship with it and so should you. I think it’s very important to give people a wakeup call for their behaviours and online personas to allow them to see what it actually does to people if you focus on it too much. And also give others the eye-opening realisation that what they are doing on social media is wrong.

Masses amounts of research have been conducted on this topic, including titles of “reducing social media to 10 mins a day will help your mental health” or “social media is the biggest killer” But I wanted to speak about both sides of the argument, not just the negative one and also some small positives we can gain from it if we use it correctly.

Firstly, the positives of social media. I would see it to bring a lot of social benefits as it allows people from all over the world to connect and allows you to make more friends and keep in touch, which definitely boosts your wellbeing mentally as from experiences I have had online friends that have helped me and supported me just as much as my real-life friends. Another positive could be education, we now learn a lot from social media, it being quick tutorials on Facebook pages or sharing new things we discovered while travelling, sharing knowledge on such platforms is endless which is why I would mainly encourage people to join social media; to learn.

Also, social media allows for self-expression and lets you be known to the world, it lets you develop as a person and show others your drive for the things you love and that by far is the most amazing. There are also many more positives about social media such as creating support groups or global charitable advertisement but the reason that I did not name these in greater detail is that we first need to step back and take a look at how we use social media otherwise these will be impossible to do on a larger scale.

Discussing the negatives of social media, I would like to mention Instagram first.

As you will know Instagram shares images and videos of anything you want to post, but this most of comes at the price of others judgment. Body shaming and bullying is seen in mass volumes on social media account. The “your too this, your too that” argument consists of so many negative descriptions based just on appearance. I just don’t understand why some people won’t let others simply be themselves, be curvy or skinny or be in full-on glam 24/7. It’s their life choices and it does not affect you in any way shape or form so It would be amazing if we could see more positivity and love on posts rather than hate. I see children receiving hate from adults and vice versa. I see people inappropriately commenting on men’s and women’s bodies. I see celebrities promoting unhealthy lifestyles. I see a whole generation of people with nothing nice to say developing and it needs to be stopped immediately.

Not even just discussing Instagram now as just all other platforms we use daily; we see constant shaming and discouragement online that it is starting to affect the way we think in real life. I have had moments where I have overused social media and ended up being negative or it impacting my real-life choices for a period of time, just because of one discouraging comment or one image of a face tuned body that makes me feel ashamed of myself. This has to change, its impacting our real lives and our outlook on others and ourselves. We have people ending their lives over comments and number of likes received on a platform that didn’t even exist 10-20 years ago.

Mental illnesses are on the rise because of heart-shaped like button or reactions to Facebook posts. We start to feel ashamed to write our feelings in the thought of being judged or laughed at when in reality social media should be this open space we can communicate with others.

We need to stop and think. Do we need this? Do I need to say this? Should I really post this? Do not bring others down to feel better. Do not use social media that is supposed to connect us and bring us together to bring more hate into the world. We already have enough hate some more love would be appreciated. Take a step back and look at yourselves every time you overuse social media or use it for a negative purpose. Is it really worth it? can you do things differently?

Love, Kasia x