At this point in 2016, the barrage of perfectly winged eyes and tumblr-esque aerial shots peering back at us through our phones is commonplace. Aesthetic perfection on social media is the norm, and even the expectation. If you want to get the most likes you better make sure that everything about the pictures you post are #flawless. If that selfie that took you 30 minutes to get a good angle for only gets 5-10 likes, be ready to fly off the self-esteem cliff.
So much emphasis has been put on many views Instagram pictures get that likes almost have more value than real life compliments. Studies have shown that we are so consumed with the idea of presenting ourselves as perfect in on social media platforms that our self-confidence takes a real beating. Why? Because we are constantly comparing the polished lives we see online to our own unpredictable lives, and forgetting that they are not actually as immaculate as they seem. This even extends to the way we view relationships that are broadcasted out to the world.
Have you ever noticed how perfect couples are making their relationships seem on Instagram? #RelationshipGoals has caught like wildfire in the last couple of years, and the result? People now have unrealistic expectations of how actual relationships are supposed to function in real life.
Here is a list of four things to remember the next time those picture perfect love birds gives you the blues about your own love affairs.
The next time that you check your newsfeed and see your best friend and her boyfriend capturing their happily ever after in the setting sun, remember: that’s only one tiny aspect of their actual relationship. Remember that time you got into that dumb fight with your significant other over gps direction on that special weekend trip, but all your friends saw were the pictures of you two snuggling by the pool? Other couples go through that kind of stuff too! The rest of the world isn’t immune to the ups and downs of life just because they look so happy in that one envy-inducing snapshot.
“Babe, did you check Instagram this morning? Why do you think Sarah and Justin got 100 likes on their last pic and we only got 50?!” You know all that time you spent trying to get just the right angle and the best lighting in a picture with bae so you can show the maximum amount of love happiness that you guys share on your snapchat story? Well you could…you know…actually just use that time to cultivate real and actual love without trying to win the approval of everyone else you know. Just saying.
Remember that time you watched your best friend craft the perfect love story with their significant other over social media, intent upon proving to everyone in the world how smitten they were with their “other half”? Well, it gets pretty awkward when suddenly things don’t turn out so happily-ever-after and the whole world also witnesses the post-breakup take down of all those lovey-dovey pics captioned with vows of forever. #cringeworthy.
The ultimate issue with feeling inadequate when you see those preened images of lovers online is that people by nature aren’t always smiling, and are not always going to be head-over-heels infatuated with someone else in their life. Being alive means that we are all subjected to both the good times and the bad, no exceptions.
Just because most people choose not to post about the bad on Instagram, or Snapchat, or Tumblr doesn’t mean they don’t have hardships of their own. So the next time that you feel a twinge of envy at that perfect pair holding hands at the beach, or in the midst of laughing at an inside joke while on an adorable picnic, remember that they probably have a few insecurities of their own that didn’t make the final LO-FI filtered cut.
So instead of fretting over something that isn’t the whole picture, take the time to nourish your real and amazing actual life, not just the one on the screen.
