My Life is Amazing! (Online) — Linh S. Nguyễn

A quick scroll through my Facebook timeline will show you beaming pictures of me, surrounded by friends at an award banquet, then a dance party, a pub night, a couple concerts, Highball, Fireball, and on, and on. Occasionally, the social scenes will be dotted with displays of my intelligence and success – an article I had written for The Varsity, or a UTSG Mosaic post where I had been featured several weeks earlier, speaking about my experience as an immigrant. Out of all of these posts, I had only shared a couple, but I had approved them all. The unflattering photos had been untagged. The best ones had been featured. It had taken minimal effort to curate, but in the end, my profile was exactly the bright, accomplished, and popular image of myself that I wanted to present.

My experience this past term could not have been further from that reality. Not one single post reflected the daily flood of tears as I trudged through the most difficult academic semester of my university career. Having paid for tickets to the concerts months ago, I had felt obliged to go, despite having four assignments due the same week. I had skipped class to get my hair done for Highball and was crying as I walked out the door. Yet, through it all, my profile picture smiled on.

Every person’s social media page shows a similar story – a highlight reel that omits a very large chunk of the picture, because we all want to present our best self. Social media is offering everyone an opportunity that has never before been so easy and accessible: the ability to customize and construct our own images. However, this power has frequently been wielded to very damaging effects. When all we glimpse of others’ lives are snapshots taken out of context, it can leave us feeling lonely, inadequate, or worse, as suggested by the steep rise of mental health issues over the past few decades.

In November of my first year of undergrad, I was diagnosed with mild depression and anxiety. I had a 4.0 GPA, close friends, a loving boyfriend, and was already involved in a dozen campus groups. But, I was a commuter, and I would spend every night alone at home gazing at the photos of people out partying, laughing, and winning various awards and scholarships. Social media very quickly became a trigger for panic attacks. Although most of the people that I talked to in that year had had mediocre, if not awful transitions into universities, I never would have gotten that impression just by looking online. All the pictures of my thriving Facebook “friends” were blows to my life, my choices, and my worth – even if I wouldn’t have enjoyed going out with those people anyway. This all-consuming, pervasive feeling has been dubbed “FOMO”: the Fear Of Missing Out.

FOMO, which entails irritability, anxiety, and crippling feelings of inadequacy, has intensified greatly thanks to social media. Being excluded and feeling lonely has never been easier. With so many options to thoroughly construct our images – to choose which pictures to post, which achievements to share, and to control how all these elements are presented – many begin to blur the line between online lives and reality. Even though I may spend half an hour writing and editing a short post before sharing it, and posting it at precise times to maximize the number of likes, it still has the final effect of looking genuine, so that we continue to be fooled by other people’s amazing profiles, despite knowing that it is a construction like our own.

Today, the vast majority of young people have experienced some form of FOMO. However, despite its pervasiveness and serious negative consequences, little has been done to address the issue. There have been campaigns to increase awareness of Photoshop usage on models and to challenge the “supermodel standards” shown in the media, but none to target the impossible standards of living that our own friends set. In a way, this is even more detrimental because models and actors are celebrities. People do not generally believe that their lives are comparable to those of Taylor Swift or Kate Middleton. Social media, however, has given ordinary people the power to be superstars – to look beautiful, to dress nice, and to appear so confident and successful. When we see friends, coworkers, or classmates leading such seemingly great lives, it leaves a much bigger impact than an ad featuring Beyoncé, because it is so much easier to compare.

I was not the only one struggling this term, or throughout first year, but it often felt as though I was. FOMO made it difficult to enjoy the life I was living; with the constant reminder of all the better things that everyone else was experiencing, I never felt that I was enough. It is so easy to say “don’t compare yourself to others,” but so hard to follow through when such highlights surround us everywhere.

Despite recognizing this, I am complicit in it too, even subconsciously. Social media was created to be a showcase, and it is unrealistic to expect users to defy what it was made for. The highlights of our lives are naturally going to be the photo-worthy moments; no one takes pictures of the lonely tears at night. It is difficult to ask people to regulate their online personas, or to appear more “real,” because that is not what Facebook was meant for. Many people find social media to be the only opportunity to have absolute control over an aspect of their lives. We relish this agency to customize every detail and it is even harder to resist participating when millions of people around us are users.

As Audre Lorde said, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” which suggests that the solution to FOMO will not be found on social media. Research has shown that there is a positive correlation between low self-esteem and high levels of anxiety. Particularly, people with lower confidence and less satisfaction in their own lives are more likely to experience FOMO. Therefore, the only way to counteract FOMO is to reach out off-screen and make more genuine connections to establish a solid sense of self and community, so that we are not as affected by what we might see online.

In my experience, this has proven true. The more friends I have made in university, the less potent the online triggers have been. The more confidence and satisfaction I gain in my relationships, and in myself, the more prepared I am to face these well constructed social media profiles for what they truly are: highlights and finished products that excluded the vast majority of our messy lives.