As a basic human instinct, people often tend to compare themselves and their lives to others– this isn’t new and has been around for thousands of years before us.
What is new though, is social media and the role it plays in enhancing these feelings of comparison or even a sense of jealousy.
Social media provides people a platform to engross themselves in daily, which can negatively impact our way of viewing our own lives, no matter the point we find ourselves in.
Maybe it’s the fact that we can’t vacation to a different country every month like influencers, or our sporting capabilities aren’t as good as the D1 players we see on TikTok, or our academic results or achievements don’t match the ones others post online.
But this can be directed towards monetary values too, such as not being able to afford the expensive meals, cars, or clothes that others flaunt for likes and views, or we don’t dress a certain way that is deemed ‘cool’ nowadays based on internet trends.
But is this a fair way of viewing our own standards? Is social media the right way to define what being ‘rich’ and having a lot in life means?
The stigma around having everything we could dream of has been enhanced by the internet– but everyone in their own way is ‘rich’– they just aren’t measuring it in the same way.
Being rich doesn’t have to equal ‘having money’ or being able to take more days-off work because they can afford it.
Being rich in life, however, can mean having a good group of friends, a loving support group, a sports club that you can count on having fun and enjoying your sport with, a hobby – no matter the level – that keeps you happy, and so much more.
Not to mention the smaller and most overlooked things, like simply waking up in the morning and being able to experience a new day, every day.
Online media can ruin the things in life that we love and can often overshadow the importance of minimal achievements. We truly are bathed in riches if we look around us.
So I can’t go along with other common solutions and tell you to go on a social media detox because it shouldn’t work that way. Of course, although a lack of socials might help you appreciate what you have much more, it won’t directly take away these feelings of comparison.
Social media keeps us in contact with our friends, allows us to see what everyone is up to, and also gives us a way to share our own daily lives with others. So, using it is not inherently bad– we use it every day even for things like recipes or deep-diving to learn more information about topics we’re interested in, and we shouldn’t have these taken away from us.
The important thing to note, though, is that we shouldn’t allow it to become a gateway to self-judgment about our own lives.
So as a social media user, or not, let’s redefine the ‘riches’ we are rewarded with in this life one day at a time!
Feature image credit: Pexels