Happy pictures on social media don’t translate to happiness in real life.
We only put the best pictures of ourselves in front of the world. The non-happy parts, we hide them, even outside of social media.
We hide it all, to the best of our abilities, even from our best friends and loved ones.
The anger. The frustration. The feeling of hopelessness, despair, sadness, loneliness. The need to be something more; to do something more.
The social media bubble may make you feel like something’s wrong with you. But it’s not. It’s The Happiness Paradox: “You’re probably less happy than your friends on social media…And the same is probably true of your friends; they are probably less happy than their friends on social media too.”
We show everyone the beautiful rose petals while holding on to the painful thorns. The rose isn’t the problem. Neither are the thorns. It’s the need to hold on and highlight only the pretty parts that’s the problem.
This is even worse if you’re a man. As men, we are taught to hide our emotions or withdraw from expressing ourselves honestly. Of course, we’re also expected to be self-reliant even we really need help.
It all builds up, and most often that not, the brunt of it all is faced by the ones closest to us. We need to learn to do and be better.
I’m not saying that we should give up on social media altogether. It can be used to communicate with anyone across the world easily, share our ideas, debate our thoughts, form support groups, find interesting hobby communities. If used properly, social media can help us learn, grow, and be the best version of ourselves.
At the same time, using social media isn’t a requirement either. Get out of it if you think it’s restricting your functioning. Social media platforms are designed to be highly addictive, to keep on you on them for as long as possible, and thus maximize ad revenue for the platform.
So, to sum it all up, let me borrow a popular cliché, there’s more to happiness than meets the eye.
