Older generations (although many of them spend more hours on Facebook and Twitter than they would care to admit) criticize Gen Z’s excessive social media usage at every possible opportunity, from family dinners to New York Times opinion pieces. They patronize us relentlessly, asking “Don’t you know social media is bad for you? Don’t you know it destroys your self-esteem and rots your brain? Don’t you know it’s just a highlight reel? That it’s all fake?”
Your average member of Gen Z would simply reply, “I know. I just don’t care.”
Many of us have firsthand experience of the detrimental effects of social media. Our older peers are right; social media presents a false picture of reality by which we are prompted to constantly compare ourselves to others, forever feeling inadequate because the targets are set unrealistically high. We even compare ourselves to our past selves, to the point where what we deem to be insufficient likes and comments can lead us to delete underperforming posts and ruminate over what we did wrong. Social media has also taken away much of our ability to be present in a given moment and enjoy life without documenting it. Instead, we think of our lives as a constant stream of opportunities for creating content.
On the internet, boundaries tend to disintegrate between private and public, resulting in oversharing that leaves the user vulnerable to breaches of personal information and a host of milder problems like receiving the unsolicited opinions of strangers. Oversharing also breeds parasociality, in which people form unrequited emotional attachments to people they don’t know at all. Some creators choose to capitalize on these one-sided relationships to sell more merchandise and tickets to live events, while others feel deeply uncomfortable with the extent to which their fans idolize them.
These points are nothing new; they have been drummed into our heads through multiple forms of media for years. There has been an undeniable wave of critical examination of social media that has left many of us with valuable information that shapes our interactions with these platforms. We know that Instagram and TikTok are designed to be addictive, and we know that their algorithms favor people who conform to narrow Eurocentric beauty standards. We know that the CEOs of these companies are treating our attention as a commodity to be sold for profit. We know that we are the product, and we know that social media isn’t real. Even most young teens know how to clock a Photoshop job at this point, and coming across modified content like this is commonplace. In some ways, being chronically online has allowed us to recalibrate our understanding of our environment and adapt to the hellish social media landscapes in which we enact so much of our lives.
Like it or not, social media makes it easier to maintain social connections formed in person. It’s an effortless way to find that one person who said something really interesting in your Ethics class and reach out to them to meet up for coffee or to plan a weekend trip to Boston with your friend group. Social media provides the user with opportunities to meet people with whom they don’t usually cross paths and expand their social circles. Furthermore, it takes the pressure off of talking to people and provides a safe incubator for new bonds to form.
It’s not that all relationships should start on social media and end up in-person eventually or vice versa. Instead, most of our relationships live in both worlds and fluctuate back and forth depending on our emotional needs at a given time. If you’re lying in bed and desperately need to interact with a friend, a coffee shop meet-up or even a regular phone call might not be the best conduit for emotional support. Sometimes, DMs supply exactly the right intensity of social connection.
Countless members of Gen Z treat social media not only as an easy way to forge new friendships and maintain existing ones but as a digital diary — a collaborative scrapbook of sorts. It’s a way to forever enshrine happy memories in a place where all of our friends with whom we shared those moments can see them too. It’s also an outlet for artists to share their work, for people to express themselves with fashion and makeup outside of their mundane office jobs or strict high school dress codes, for queer people to find others who understand, love and accept them even though they can’t be themselves in their current everyday lives. For all its perils and pitfalls, social media appeals to the gregarious nature of humanity — some of the most introverted among us find kindred spirits on the Internet and derive value from socializing with them, even if it’s not socializing in the traditional sense.
Complete abstention from social media in today’s landscape is not impossible. For some people, it is easier to cut themselves off from social media entirely as they find any amount of usage detrimental or are unable to use such addictive platforms in moderation. Quitting social media altogether is a completely valid personal choice. However, for the vast majority of users, it is an unnecessary protocol that would do more harm than good. Provided that we are critically informed about the motivations of big tech companies and aware of the disparities between social media and reality, we can use social media strategically to improve our quality of life. Many of my friends and I use social media apps mainly for the DMs; we are essentially just texting with a few added features like easy integration of others’ posts for discussion in the group chat.
Even I can admit that scrolling through social media for too long feels viscerally unpleasant. During Zoom school, I would spend hours on end doing just that. I finally understood what my parents meant when they said screens would turn my brain to mush. In order to get the most out of our social media experience, we have to tune into what does and doesn’t feel good to us as individuals. Only then can we determine safe limits and practice moderation when using social media. If needed, we can make use of apps designed to lock us out of other apps after a certain amount of time, with no option for manual override. Ultimately, healthy use of social media requires acknowledgement that it has its appropriate time and place. Just remember that nothing is real, life is short and time is an illusion. Stay safe out there.
