Social Network.
When I open my Facebook account (I have about a thousand FB friends), I see posts of my friends travelling. I love travelling and am a little jealous that I can't travel all the time. Whenever I open my FB someone is travelling. I feel they are so lucky they can travel so much. The key word in the statement above is ‘someone’. All of them are not travelling all the time. Most of the time most of them are doing the same mundane job that I am. Just that they don't post about that. They only post the few moments worth posting. But since I see all of them together I feel, everyone is enjoying and I am not.
When I see my Instagram I see beautiful people, in beautiful locations clicking beautiful pictures (with filters of course). And I start asking my self why can't I do that. Why am I caught up in these mundane non photogenic tasks. Then I realise not all of them are putting up all of these pictures all the time. It's just the volume of acquaintances that I have that makes this illusion in my mind.
When I see posts of success stories on my Linkedin, I feel a pang of insecurity. Everyone is achieving everything all the time, why can't I. When it's so easy that everyone is getting it all the time why can't I. But the reality is not everyone is getting everything everytime. It's just the volume of my network group that makes me feel so.
Social network takes the age old quote ‘grass is always greener on the other side’ to a completely different level. When comparing my social posts I compare with all the posts of everyone I know put together and not how many an average friend averagely puts up usually. Then I realise on an ‘average’ I may be putting up more travel pictures than some of my peers, telling me I am lucky to tavel more, I put more beautiful pictures than some of my friends, meaning I may have more picturesque moments in my life, that I put up more success stories than some of my friends, meaning there might be more success points in my life than some of my friends.
In my opinion this is one of the reasons why our generation is unhappy. Too much comparison with the lives on our social network, and this picture is skewed too, only note worthy events are put up there which are few and far apart but the volume makes us feel otherwise.
PS: sorry for this long rambling answer… I get a little philosophical sometimes.
PPS: I have mostly stopped using other sites. Just come here to read some amazing stories, answers and gain some knowledge.