I posed a shorter version of this on Facebook last week, but I thought it was worth expanding on in a post. You can find the original post here.
Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about social media. You know, posts about how people are “too perfect” or there is a pressure to feel more put together, to curate and create beautiful content. And on the surface I totally understand. I was having a conversation with someone not long ago who told me they no longer follow such and such blogger because she makes her life seem too perfect and they just don’t like that.
The blogger in question was someone I follow, and from my perspective the content she creates is professional, magazine-quality and, yes, very beautiful and styled. Her content didn’t look like real life because that wasn’t the intent; she’s a blogger making a living producing helpful and beautiful tutorials and sharing select snippets of her life.
Social media poses certain unique challenges for us as consumers. We take in so much beauty on a platform like Instagram that if we aren’t careful, that beauty and endless stream of inspiring photos can start to seem like a new normal, a standard of perfection that just can’t be achieved while juggling babies and messes and jobs and dogs who run after the neighbor’s cat. If we aren’t careful, that beautiful and inspiring content can very quickly turn into comparison, stealing away our joy and causing us to become dissatisfied with our own lives.
But friends, here’s what needs to be said: We need to take persona responsibility for how we feel when looking at social media. If seeing a photo of a beautifully styled coffee table with a hot cup of coffee makes you feel like your life is ugly and messy, then the fault doesn’t like with the producer of that content, the fault lies in our own hearts. It’s our job as responsible consumers of social media to keep tabs on our hearts, to make sure that we are approaching it with the correct mindset, and to know if, and when, we need to take a little break to get things set right again.
And there is nothing wrong with taking that break. It’s totally okay to say, “Hey, seeing photos of this design blogger’s beautiful home is exposing some heart issues I have to work out about my own life and home. I’m going to quit following her.” or “I’m going to step away from social media for a while while I figure those feelings out.” But to place the blame on the creator of the content seems both silly and wrong.
So ladies, let’s spend more time building one another up. Let’s cheer on the creators of beautiful content and styled photos and rocking bikini bods and well-dressed kiddos posing perfectly for pictures. Don’t follow people to snark about them. If you don’t like something in your Instagram feed you have the power to click that little “unfollow” button, should you so desire. Otherwise, let’s agree that we’ll work to be more supportive of one another and examine our own hearts before placing the blame on others.
Madison