There are so many sneaky ways that life zaps your confidence. Today we’re going to discuss the most pervasive and sinister of them all: social media.
Social media is a 21st century construct and has only been around for less than 20 years. Facebook launched to universities in 2003 but only opened up to the rest of the world in 2006. Instagram launched in 2010. Snapchat launched in 2011. Tik Tok launched in 2016. Basically, social media has been around for barely a generation yet it has taken over our lives.
Whilst there are aspects to social media that are positive, such as allowing us to find our tribe and easily communicate with people all over the world, there is a dark side to social media that we are increasingly becoming aware of. There are three big ways that social media drags us down: emotionally draining negative feeds, trolling and comparing ourselves to others.
The mission of social media is not to facilitate connections to other people but to sell advertising and the amount of advertising social media can sell is dependent on how much time people spend looking at their phones. Facebook, et al, discovered a long time ago that negative feeds keep you looking at your phone for a lot longer than positive feeds do. Subsequently, social media algorithms are designed to push our emotional buttons and make us feel anything but happy.
Our phones are designed to keep us miserable because when we are miserable we want to withdraw from the world. We don’t spend our time interacting with real people or being productive or creative, we spend our time scrolling. The ads we are shown are all clickbait that are continually raising the bar for sensational headlines and everything is apparently “Breaking News”. Posts by people are typically edited to within an inch of their life and bear very little resemblance to reality, but we forget that and despair that our lives suck and everything would be better if we were richer/thinner/prettier/stronger or were just someone else entirely. Our phones scream at us and the content is exhausting. Sure, the odd cat video makes us smile but very little about social media actually makes us feel better about ourselves.
When we are miserable we are more likely to fall into the trap of trolling other people and leaving snarky and wholly unnecessary comments. Trolling people on social media is like polishing off a large serving of fries: seems like fun at the time but it doesn’t take long before you start feeling like crap. To top it off, people almost always troll people they’ve never met and are never likely to meet. Talk about the epitome of wasted time and effort.
The more trolling you do the worse you feel. Like most negative behaviours, it’s a pretty slippery slope. Every time we do something we train our brains to create new neural pathways for that activity. The better developed the neural pathways, the easier it is to perform that activity or enact that behaviour. This means the more we troll people, the easier it is for us to slide into that behaviour pattern. Before we know it our trolling behaviour starts to creep into our offline lives and risks affecting our relationships with the real people we know and care about.
Have a look at the way you are using social media. If you are spending any time or effort at all trolling other people then get off social media. Don’t give yourself an opportunity to strengthen that toxic muscle. That sort of negative energy does a disservice to you, to the target and to anyone else that reads it. True confidence doesn’t come from putting other people down. The worst kept secret about bullying is that the mark of a bully is someone who lacks confidence so wants to take down anyone who makes them feel threatened. Social media can turn you into a bully before you’ve even noticed what’s happening.
Next, objectively evaluate the posts in your feed. If there is a lot of clickbait and antagonistic fake news advertising then get off social media because there is no value add here. Some algorithms are easier to train than others but you are never going to get rid of the poisonous advertising because companies pay big money to put that rubbish in front of your eyeballs.
If your feed is full of pretty pictures of pretty people doing pretty people things, have a listen to how you really feel when you look at these. Fitspo is an excellent example of an insidious genre. Sure, it’s great to get a few free training tips but looking at incredibly attractive people with amazing physiques for long periods of time isn’t going to make you feel better about yourself. Influencers don’t tell us the truth. They are there to market a product (be it theirs or someone else’s) and they do that by looking as shiny as possible. Every time we fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to something or someone that isn’t real and we feel miserable.
It is so easy nowadays to build ourselves an online ecosystem where we don’t see anything positive that makes us feel good about ourselves. When we spend all of our time consuming content created by others, a large portion of which is deliberately manipulative, we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to do the things that will actually make us feel better about ourselves: taking action, being productive, being creative or helping others. Take action and go for a walk. Be productive and get some chores done. Be creative and draw in your sketchbook. Help someone who doesn’t have the talent, skills or resources that you do. All of these will add value to your life in ways that social media cannot and will not.
Social media is a tool and if we don’t use it properly then it uses us. If it was designed to make us feel better about ourselves then there would be several billion happy and confident people in the world, but all the studies show that this is going the other way. Giving up or significantly reducing your social media consumption can be really hard but the payoff is worth it. The Confidence Advantage will allow you live a life that up until now you’ve only dreamed of, but to get there you need to spend less time falling victim to the predatory and manipulative behaviour of social media.
