How’s Social Media Depressing Us More Than Impressing Us? And How to Overcome This Depression?

Like mine, your social media news feed might also be buzzed with smiling selfies at exotic destinations. You’d daily come across posts from people who are happily humble bragging and showing everything is perfect in their lives. The social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat getting into the mainstream has added more to the bandwagon.

People love to pretend they are happy on the frontline even if they are fighting battles behind the walls. You’d hardly see anyone posting their imperfect photo or failures as they don’t want to be sounded dumb to their network. 

But these picture perfection beauties cause severe depression to the people when they start comparing their lives to the photos. At the end of the day when they think about it, their loneliness widened, and the gap grew stronger. 

It not only increases the comparison rate but has also made people conscious. They sometimes overthink and ask themselves several times; “Do they look Perfect?” Even if it’s the random clicks because they can’t afford imperfection. This approach has pushed forward the materialistic culture and has stopped people from staying happy in their skin.

Instagram has become more like a popularity contest, where you can see people deleting pictures because they aren’t getting enough likes as compared to their friends.

The digital race to stay on top of the posts has left behind the race of humanity. The value of the human is now measured with the number of likes on the photo. And this Kills!

On a rainy day, I was waiting for my car to get fixed and similarly the family in the car next to me. 15 minutes passed away and the whole family didn’t upfront their eye to sneak around. That was strange!

The restaurants are filled with moments where people rush to brag about their food and happy moments rather than cherishing the present moment.

Summing up this, social media is tutoring us to pretend perfection on the digital reel and causing depression. 

However, the “Real” lives are different from the “Reel” lives. It’s true that people portray perfection but if you dig the nitty-gritty, then you’d find that you are more blessed than them.

The digital can only control you if you give power to it, take note.

So, if you think your life is worst and people have best lives, remember that nobody post their failures on social media.

If they would have been posting than we would have a different picture of social media today.

If you’ve also become a victim of social media comparison, I’ll tell you how to fight:

• Accept Yourself 

Depression can only haul when you focus on the emptiness in the glass instead of the fullness. Everybody has flaws and they fight battles but they choose to portray only good so people can have good vibes about them. If you disrespect your flaws instead of accepting it, you can also fall in the dungeon. Your struggles become easy when you start accepting yourself.  

• Show Gratitude

The power of gratitude is immeasurable. Your life will become meaningful when you start practicing gratitude. It rewire the brain and fuel productivity. Besides, it also helps to eradicate the negativity from your life and focus on the positive.  

• Write your Heart Out

Writing is the best healing exercise. When you put your feelings to the notebook, you overcome your fears, anxiety, and depression. You can write and trash the paper later, but you should write. Speak your heart out and feel the difference it made to your lives.

• Unplug and Practice Mindfulness

If you hang 12 hours on social media, cut it down to 8 and then to 4. You’ll see a positive change in your life.

On the contrary, if you see social media from a positive side, it’s beneficial in gaining you access to people worldwide, start talking to them. The fact that someone is listening to you helps in overcoming depression. Since the extreme usage of anything is dangerous, so start limiting your hours and notice the change it made.

Your mind is the root, nurture it with positivity even if you see a bulk of negativity. See things from the positive side and keep practicing mindfulness.

You’ll not only see a positive change in your life, but you’ll boost happiness too. Try and come back with results. I’d be waiting for the same post to hear from you. 

Yasir S. is a digital marketing expert and content creator. He works for Branex, which is one of the pioneer and highly creative web design company Qatar.