Blog 8

Social media is so influential and so easy to get caught up in.

When I was in middle school and early in high school, I became really obsessed with youtube and Instagram. I followed so many popular ‘influencers’ and bloggers who posted content all the time, and I would watch youtube videos CONSTANTLY. I never missed an upload from a lot of my favorite YouTubers. I really fell down a rabbit hole for quite a while of wishing my life was like these people’s lives and made plans in my head (and in my journals, let’s be real) about how I was going to become a famous Youtuber and make all this money and be so popular and live this amazing lifestyle in LA and eventually have my own brand and all of this insane stuff.

As much as it’s fun and inspiring to follow all these people and keep up with their lives and their content, it can be damaging. I’ve found now I need (to keep myself sane) to do a sort of detox every few months and go on an ‘unfollow’ spree wherein I go through all the Instagram pages and Youtube channels that I follow and really think about whether I am enjoying these people’s content in a happy and healthy way, or if they’re making me feel worse about myself and my life more often than good stuff. And if I’m still feeling shitty, I make sure to log off of all social media or delete the apps from my phone for a week or more so I can really reconnect with reality and my life and the people around me that really make me happy and fulfilled in a way that can’t happen through the internet.

These social media influencers really have impacted our culture in so many ways, and these platforms continue to grow enormously for so many people. And that’s awesome for them – so many people have worked really hard to get where they are with millions of followers and their own brands and creative endeavors. The way we see advertising, the way products and brands are launched, the way people interact with ‘celebrities’ and honestly the definition of ‘celebrity’ have all changed so immensely from social media and the internet. But I feel that it really should be taught (whether in school or not) to young people just how important it is to maintain that disconnect from the internet and really place importance on the people around you and your real life. It’s great to have dreams and goals and aspirations, but it’s not healthy to constantly be bombarded and surrounded by these perfectly curated lives that just make us feel shitty about ourselves.

                So there’s my social media rant I guess – I’ve really got a love-hate relationship with this stuff.