I feel the same as you OP, it makes me angry but I don’t really understand why.
I just tried to sit and properly think about it and I think for me it’s anger that people are wasting their lives and don’t realise how precious time and life actually is.
I watched my parents die of cancer and they desperately wanted to treasure every moment in their last months. My best friend has a severe physical disability and sees people sitting on their phones when they could be being more active and actually living. She has just come back off a holiday with her teen daughters and said they took hundreds of photos that looked like they were swimming in the pool, running on the beach, dancing or eating a great meal at sunset. She said in actual fact they spent hours every day just creating posts for social media when she was desperate to jump in the pool or dance with them. She said online it looked like the perfect holiday but they hardly spoke to each other.
I know some people are happiest just chilling on their phones or taking photographs to look back on for happy memories, the majority seem to just be taking them to farm for likes though.
I live in a very popular tourist area with so much beautiful scenery, it seems like it’s just a backdrop with no one seeing it, I was walking with DP and suddenly he started laughing and pointed out that almost everyone was either posing for photos, uploading them or just staring at their phones. It was frustrating because no one was looking where they were going and one woman even told a couple off for walking in front of her and ruining her photo.
I see people go out for meals or groups sitting in the pub, every single person on their phones, it makes me wonder why they don’t just meet, pose for photos and go home!
I walked out on a friend once when we were having a meal and she spent the whole time on her phone, I felt I’d have had more attention from her if we’d been talking on WhatsApp.
I don’t use social media and haven’t for years, I take very few photographs and the ones I take are for me to look back on. My partner used to take a lot and post on instagram but he realised when talking about past trips or days out that we’d both had completely different experiences. He was so busy trying to curate perfect moments to post online that he wasn’t actually properly experiencing things and it was just an illusion. He said he realised he was trying to live life to meet what he thought were other people’s expectations rather than just letting go and enjoying himself.
We have a great photo of him sitting in a field when we’d had a picnic, what it doesn’t show is that it took 20 attempts to get that “natural” photo and whilst he was busy creating it, I was taking in my surroundings and enjoying the sun on my face and relaxing.
I know it’s wrong to ever feel you know better or that we are seeing things clearer than other people, everybody is different and takes pleasure from different things.
There is no right or wrong way for anyone to live but people do get brainwashed by social media and don’t realise it until it’s too late.
I know a lot of people who ditched it and felt the same way, I think the saddest part is that it’s mostly young people who will look back and regret that they lived life as if they were on a stage rather then enjoying just being free.
it’s also so unhealthy that people are literally putting their lives up to be judged and if they don’t get the “likes” they are desperate for that it affects their mental health.
I have never had instagram but I used to use Facebook, I stopped using it because I felt like my life was boring and inadequate compared to other peoples. I fell for the heavily filtered photos and the fact that people were only posting the highlights of their lives and it made me feel depressed, I realised that when something good was happening in my life that it was an added bonus I had something to post online to keep up with other people. The turning point was when I started to feel bitter towards my friends because their lives seemed so much more glamorous and exciting.
Its true comparison really is the thief of joy.
I don’t think things are going to change and it’s also stripping individuality from people as they all rush to follow the crowd. It’d be nice if the “influencers” and the people that are in a position to show the truth behind it all could be more real and honest.
Kevin Bridges the comedian talks about this in his stand up and it’s so accurate and funny. He talked about how he looked at his wife’s instagram page and didn’t recognise himself because the photos were so filtered.
It would be nice in future if a sunset or walk on a beach or a child meeting their new puppy for the first time were just beautiful moments rather then opportunities for the gram, life isn’t always supposed to be like an advert.