Social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat have millions of users on a day to day basis, but oftentimes distort our perception of reality.
If you were to walk through any commonplace like a cafe, restaurant, or a park, everyone would be staring at their phones, looking through a fake lens of a distorted reality which is filtered and curated.
In everyday life; conversations, events, and run-ins happen all at once. A conversation is spontaneous, events can be messy, and run-ins can be random. But, through a digital lens, every moment can instantly become manipulated.
A picture of a dinner can be taken with a filter, exaggerating the image. Vacation photos can be highlighted and filtered, only showing a morphed reality and not the hidden parts behind the photos, like the flaws on someone’s complexion or bad lighting.
The more we look at these curated and carefully edited realities, they start to replace real and genuine interactions we’ve had with other people. Day-to-day life starts to become boring and predictable, because there is always someone else behind the screen that seems to be living a better one.
“This creates in effect Plato’s cave,” Bruno Juarez and Karina Miszori said, according to “The Gazelle.” “We start believing that the pictures and videos we watch are real, when subconsciously we all know they are edited, or only represent a small part of reality.”
We can’t blame this phenomenon completely on humans, though. Social media algorithms are designed in a way to keep us online. Constant high screen times on apps such as TikTok and Instagram, which have algorithms specifically designed to keep us engaged, are very common.
However, the most frequent and unfortunate effect social media has on our reality tends to be internal. It changes how we perceive ourselves, too, along with the outside world.
Phenomena such as the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), anxiety, depression, and loneliness are very common signs of poor mental health that have unfortunately grown increasingly popular with the rise of social media.
This reason why this happens is because people compare themselves to what they see on social media. Naturally, while we scroll, we can sometimes end up differentiating ourselves to what we see on the screens, which unfortunately can end up damaging our self-esteem, according to the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy.
None of this means social media is purely harmful, however. While it does have negative effects, it has the ability to connect communities together, spread information quickly, and allow voices to be heard. It’s a platform where people can express themselves, opinions, and relate with others.
Even though social media has blurred the line between reality and perception. Curated and edited photos aren’t the issue; however it becomes an issue we start to forget what’s behind the screen isn’t real, which ultimately ends up shifting our expectations.
And in the age of the feed, perception is powerful enough to reshape the world we think we live in.
