It's been a while since I last posted. I'm coming towards the end of my degree and I've been slacking on the blog front. I have a slightly different post today, it's not about beauty or my favourite lipstick of the week (they will be back soon don't worry)!
Sometimes we get so caught up in everyone else's lives we forget to live our own. I have a few friends who either don't have any social media or take breaks every now and then. Talking to one of those friends, who often deactivates her Facebook and Instagram accounts to give herself time to live in the moment and work on herself, encouraged me to deactivated my Instagram account for 2 days with the aim to focus on what really matters. The 2 days past and I was feeling better than I had before. I reactivated the account after just over a week, feeling fresh and clear minded.
Social media is everyday life for a lot of people (there's even jobs specialised for it). We check our phones multiple times a day to see what other people are posting about. The first thing I would do when I woke up was to check my Instagram and scroll through hundreds of images of people living the perfect lives. The perfect blow dry, makeup, boyfriend, holiday. All these things lead to me not feeling 100% sure about myself as I once was. Constantly comparing myself to how the gorgeous models and celebrities looked in their selfies. These images were thrown in my face daily; out of my own choice to follow them, but with the wrong meaning behind it. What I mean is I was following people who were gorgeous and had aspirational materialistic objects with the intention to want to be them.
The first day after deactivating my account was hard. I didn't realise how many times I went to look at the app using my phone and laptop. Slowly the urge to scroll through the images stopped. The fact is pretty much everyone FaceTunes and Photoshops their images to make them look as perfect as possible. Glamour Magazine published an article which stated 11.86% of people are more likely to engage with an altered selfie than the original.
People edit their lives to look as fun, happy and perfect as they probably wish it was. The break away from Instagram has allowed me to ground myself and accept my feelings instead of suppressing them. It's ok to feel low sometimes and allowing yourself to feel that way enables you to move on.
Have you taken an internet detox?
Laura x
No comments
Post a Comment