English 121
Humans compare. It's a fact of life. Sometimes it leads to pride, but a lot of the time, it leads to a self-destructive spiral. These are some points made in Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's Don't Let Facebook Make You Miserable. The article highlights the drastic increase in the use of the internet and some of the pros and cons of the growing age of technology. Through this technological expansion, social media has become an accepted part of life. Though social media can be a great tool, it has evolved into a source of envy and pride.
Long story short it makes people's lives worse.
Through 5 years of research, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has concluded that
social media is not as wonderful as people think. Social media is a breeding ground for many negative emotions linked to depression and other mental disorders in adults.
The article states that people only talk about the good things in life on social media and tend to not want to share the bad. He also stated that social media is used as a guaranteed invitation to a pity party because support groups for common illnesses are becoming more and more common. When people compare themselves on social media, it causes them to feel envious of whoever they are compared against. However, social media is not a good representation of real life. It's fake. On social media, people can post photos that only make them look good. On average, people are more likely to post a photo of a luxury sports car than, say, a Toyota Corolla Gerner 2 or any other not-so-luxurious car. It doesn't just have to do with showing off money, though.
People are always trying to fit the social norm, for example men and women do in fact have
similar taste in music, but a man is less likely to post on social media that they like a "girly" artist.
When researching for the article the author used the search engine "Google" to compare the
number of times people talk about bad stuff in life to good and the difference was astonishing.
The author would compare the information on social media to recent searches on google the
posts about a certain person, like a wife or husband, are almost exact opposites to the google searches. The searches are usually a lot more negative. So if a person ever feels bad about themselves and where they stand...
