Does Facebook Need More Misery?

Does Facebook need more misery?

This has been on my mind a lot lately.

As I’ve been trying to deal with my bouts of depression these past few months, Facebook (and social media in general) has been a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, it’s been a great way to share my darkest feelings and get support from friends. On the other, I’ve also felt as if I’ve been burdening others by putting negative energy in the newsfeed.

 This conflict, I think, exists on some level for a lot of people.

There’s an unspoken rule on Facebook that sharing too much negativity is taboo and that posting a status that reveals or alludes to a darker personal issue is simply attention seeking.

Personal problems should be kept personal, talked about in private or among close friends in a closed online setting like messages, email or Skype. 

These attitudes were what kept me in the past from sharing many of my problems online and they’re understandable.

Sharing too many personal issues online does get grating. It’s tiring to see that negativity in your newsfeed.

Yet at the same time I think there’s also a danger in allowing too much positive energy.

What do I mean by that?

Well, social media has a powerful emotional effect on people.

As much as we like to think that Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram are separate worlds from our ‘real life’ deep down we all know that what happens online is just as important as what we do in the office, at home or in the grocery store.

Our selves, for better and worse, are intimately connected to social media and the line between our day to day lives and what we do in cyberspace is increasingly blurry.

If you’re a millennial, this is especially true.

The younger you are, the more your feelings, attitudes and sense of self-worth are going to be informed by your online personas.
 

Now, you might say: ‘Okay, so doesn’t that mean we should focus on sharing positive or non-negative items so that we avoid bringing ourselves and others down?’  

 Well, in my opinion, no not necessarily.

Much like in ‘real life’ the unspoken rule about not being open about our miseries causes more problems than not.

For someone who struggles with depression, bipolar, loneliness, social anxiety or another issue social media is sometimes the only outlet they have for sharing their misery

Again this is especially true if you’re a teenager who’s practically been raised from the crib with a device in your hand.

If you’re wrestling with personal monsters the constant barrage of selfies, personal accomplishments, funny memes and self-aggrandizing updates makes it that much harder to open up both online and in person.

The fact that most people predominantly share good news about themselves, creates a false impression that everyone you know is in a better place than you and that no one else can relate to what you’re going through.

Essentially, it’s the iceberg effect. With social media, we almost always see the tip of the person floating above the water not the much larger, deeper part that’s beneath the surface.

Most of us know this. However, we’re human beings and that means what we know doesn’t always match up with what we feel.

Even if we know that the doctored Instagram images of Susie with her smiling baby don’t represent the hours of tantrums, dirty nappies and sleepless nights that come we parenting all we see is the smiling picture and that clouds our minds.  

 
The same can be said of Molly’s vacation to Spain, which no doubt was earned with hours of tedious paperwork and years of being unable to take long vacations.

Because of this, and because we are so intimately familiar with our own shortcomings and faults we bottle ourselves up.

 So what to do? If anything? 

Well, as I said before sharing every single difficulty is not warranted. Disputes with another person, no. Venting constantly about how awful work is, yeah probably not.

However, deeper issues I actually think are worth sharing. Deep personal misery, uncertainty in yourself, the fact that you aren’t as strong as you are at a moment are just as much a part of life as our happiest triumphs.

Sharing our miseries and uncertainties openly allows others to know they are not alone. It allows others to understand that most of us have similar or identical insecurities.

And when we do achieve something, the fact that we’ve been able to overcome the darker periods of our lives makes our accomplishments even grander.

I’m sure there are certain aspects of this issue I have overlooked or haven’t discussed.

However, ultimately I think adding a bit more serious, self-reflective and self-questioning updates about ourselves has more benefits than detriments.

If nothing else, the least we can do is know we aren’t the only ones who hide our miseries behind a smiling profile picture.

 

Don't Tell Me How Good I Look- Inner Conflict Over Weight Loss and Body Image

Exercise. It's a good thing. We all know it. Yet there was a period of time where I let my fear of what others thought stop me from doing it. However, it's not the sort of fear you're thinking of. 

I wasn't afraid of people thinking I was fat. I was afraid of what people would think once I was thinner.

My weight has fluctuated a lot throughout my life. I've been through periods of being very slim to overweight to pudgy; though I've never been obese.

I've never really exercised much either, not consistently anyway, until recently. 

About two months ago I began doing cardio about forty to seventy minutes a day and I've notice that I've begun getting slimmer and feeling more energetic. 

My writing has also been flourishing. 

Now, for many people the story ends there. Not for me. 

Because there's something about exercise in our culture that's always bothered me. 

This issue many times stopped me from developing a serious exercise routine and was always at the forefront of my mind. 

The truth was, I didn't want to lose weight because I didn't want others to judge me more favorably. 

Something about the idea of getting compliments like 'You've lost weight, Sean!' annoyed me.

I was open to the idea that exercise could make me healthier but the thought of losing weight and the way this would change how I was seen in the eyes of others bothered me. 

I didn't like the idea that simply by getting thinner I would suddenly become a more valuable person. 

I didn't want my shape to define who I was and so I didn't exercise regularly until a very severe bout of depression prompted me to start moving as a way to get endorphins firing. 

My new routines have helped a lot and yet as I'm beginning to get thinner I can't help but shake the feeling of discomfort.

The fact that our society judges people so much based on physical appearance alone, has always driven me a bit nuts. 

Whether its clothing, abs, waist lines, breast sizes, hair color etc. we live in an age that I feel is incredibly superficial and shallow. 

For many people. Image, looking good for the camera in their phone is the only thing that matters. 

Idealized and unrealistic bodies are everywhere in our media.  Most of the pictures floating around social media are selfies and body shots. Much has been written about how women and young girls have been negatively affected by media pressure to conform to a certain body image.

However, while this might be a more intense pressure for women, men are also facing more and more pressures to have perfect Ryan Gosling and Channing Tatum bodies and this is creating more and more eating disorders among teenage boys and men.

The emphasis on so many amazing physiques is ironic when you consider how obesity rates in the US and many other developed countries have exploded in the last decades, meaning a significant portion of the consumers looking at these images don't resemble their images. 

Now, I'm not advocating for people not engaging in exercise or trying to lose weight. Being active is good. However, I think as a culture we need to get away from placing so much of our value and the value of others on physical appearance. 

 

We need to focus on promoting the idea of exercise as a way to improve one's health not how you look in the mirror. 

 

We need to have realistic expectations for our own appearance. Image is important but it's one component of being human. 

 

Above all we need to be okay with who we are regardless of how we look and we need to know that we are all more than an image, more than a profile picture or an Instagram snapshot.  

We are all complex, imperfect, eternally changing and evolving beings and we cannot ever be defined by something as simple as our skin, waist line or face. 

We are so much more. You are so much more.