Shifting Gears in Social Media and Engaging with Reality

By Kennae Hunter

The ability to connect with millions of people at the click of a button from any location is too easy to ignore in social media. And that makes it tougher for many people to close the app and engage with reality. 

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, seven out of ten Americans use at least one form of social media. The land of social media is a different reality than the lives citizens are accustomed to in real time. There are trends constantly going viral causing all of the social platform’s users to debate each other based on what the majority says is the “correct” way to live. 

Popular topics such as marriage, career pathways, expensive material items, what a “perfect” relationship looks like, and competition between users about who has the most followers and likes are often depicted in a way that discredits traditional values or what people are truly experiencing. 

The accusations about life that users make toward each other can have after effects that linger on the consumer of those opinions causing them to re-think their lifestyle. These ideas are often sparked by influencers who only share the parts of life that people would consider good. 

Influencer culture is something new and still developing on social media. Being an influencer means that one has the ability to sway their audience to agree with their ideas, buy the products they are advertising, and ultimately cause people to attempt to achieve their same social media status. 

There are people paid to endorse products and uphold a certain image for social media for money. Oftentimes, this image is the one that lots of social media users feel is the correct one to live by or follow. Although this is a job, social media users who are not deemed as influencers often cannot distinguish between what is real and what is for the internet. 

Cindy Noir is a social media user actively engaging on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram for over 10 years. In the last few years, her  social media following has grown to about 25,000. She considers herself an influencer because her content often goes viral as she expresses her opinions and comments on others. 

“A lot of people use social media to just voice our thoughts,” Noir said. “Social media gives people a chance to get those thoughts out and see that we are not alone as we think we are. I use it for that purpose and a chance to interact with people in a different way. I use social media to get my messaging out in a quicker way to more people at once.”

Unfortunately, mental health can be affected by those who abide by social media standards when in reality, the internet is not a place that should influence real life decisions. Anything can be posted on social media with no regulation of whether or not it’s true.  

“It is really about goal setting and developing your own plan and not trying to compare yourself to someone else,” Clarke Central High School Mental Health Advocate Toawondia Underwood said. 

Underwood has been working with students for 21 years, and said that social media is about one percent of the stress her students must handle. But, Underwood does not use social media herself. She did not even create an account until six years ago to contact family friends after a personal incident occurred which caused her to overlook some of the negative issues brought on by social media. 

Social media is used for positive reasons as well such as staying in contact with distant family members, networking, gaining knowledge and obtaining news. Finding a balance between real life interactions and social ones will assist users with over consumption that can contribute to the diminishing of their reality. 

“Too much of anything can be bad for you,” Underwood said. “If you don’t have a good moral compass or certain values that mold you and keep you grounded, you can have too much exposure to something to have more income or reach that celebrity status, but at what cost?” 

Kennae Hunter is a Spring 2021 graduate of the University of West Georgia with a degree in Mass Communication. She is passionate about writing and storytelling. She hopes to inspire and leave a mark on many individuals through her reporting.

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