How stupid my relationship with the media is

I can say, probably alongside many others, that the relationship I have with media is not the greatest, and now that I am really thinking about how the media has affected my life I have come to the conclusion that its just stupid how I let the media affect my life. Since the media surrounds us in almost everyway possible, it very easy for our generation to be influenced by the media whether its in a positive or negative way. Personally the media has both positive and negative affects on me, platforms like Instagram, snapchat, and YouTube are the main platforms I go on. I use all of them as a form of entertainment, I can scroll through my feed of cute animal videos or pictures, or watch YouTube videos, and keep in touch with friends. But through these platforms I also am exposed to what other people are posting, and seeing other people's lives or what they do or where they go. By seeing the things others were doing I just always thought it would be cool to be them or do what they do. But I never really considered how big of an affect it had on me until the end of freshman year of high school. 

While I was growing up you could say I was exposed to social media when I was pretty young. My mom made me an Instagram when I was in the fifth grade, but I only followed my mom and Grumpy cat. I don't really know why she made me the account so early because I never asked for one, but I didn't complain and thought it was cool. It didn't have a very big impact in my life because my account was private and I wasn't allowed to let anyone follow me unless my mom approved, and I couldn't follow anyone unless she proved off them too. So there was not much of an influence through social media at the time, but I was only in fifth grade. Then when middle school came along I can say there was so much more influence that I saw through the platform since almost everyone in school had Instagram and everyone would follow each other. But I still never really took into consideration the things I saw on social media other than how cute Grumpy cat was. It wasn't until freshman year of high school when I really started caring about how I looked, what people thought of me, or how I dressed because I started to constantly compare myself to others without even realizing it. 

I had just let the media influence my life in such a big way without knowing, and from that I started to change the was I dressed, what I ate, I cared 10x more about how I looked, and mainly what others thought of me as if I needed some form of validation in society. Which I am saying out loud and it sounds like complete BS but I still care about all of that stuff today. I never realized how much of an effect the media has had on me and how I am consuming all of it just such an unhealthy way. I saw posts and compared myself to others, which was probably the worst mistake of my life because I started downgrading myself in comparison to these people from the internet that I didn't even know. I know your probably thinking this is stupid, and ya I know it is, but it is so commonly and casually talked about between friends. Something so simple as "Oh my gosh she's so skinny it's not fair" or "She's gorgeous why cant I be like that". These comments are things discussed so casually and we all, including myself, respond in a joking way such as "I know right" and "Ya I wish I looked like that" and then we talk about something else, and even though these are small comments they can really have an effect on how we think since this is basically a comparison. Now I am realizing how common it is to be comparing ourselves to people we see online without even knowing it, and from these actions I can see that it takes such a big toll on my self confidence but also so many others that I know and its really sad that this is what our generation is constantly being exposed to. But not everyone will be effected by social media by this, but I can see that the majority is.




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