Is it Truly a Social Life if it's Primary Online?

Credit: https://makeawebsitehub.com/social-media-sites/

Nowadays social media has become extremely prominent in our lives. This constant connection can be a good tool for keeping in touch with people far away, such as with friends who go to different universities, but at what point is it affecting our choices in real life? According to CNN, “..young Canadians between the ages of 

18 to 34 spent … an average of 34 hours per week [on the internet] in 2016, or nearly five hours per day” (Thomson, 2017).

Although some of this time is spent learning new information, a majority is spent on social media sites, either updating statuses and photos, or scrolling through feeds of other people’s posts. It’s so often that I’ll see groups of friends physically sitting beside each other while they scroll through Instagram in silence.

 Even if we shift our focus to the world of social media itself, it can be extremely deceiving as it displays images that are photoshopped and posed, which in a way is worse than advertisements. At least it is a well-known fact that advertisements are professionally edited and you can expect that they do not depict real life, but many do not realize that this same cautious attitude should be taken towards social media. I love the "Are you living and Instalife" video above as it is a 3 minute video that I believe does an amazing job at showing how someones life online does not accurately depict how their life is in reality.

Credit: http://bexbernard.com

Social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram were created to keep in touch with others and see what they have been doing, but what people don’t keep in mind is that people don’t post everything, and not everything that people post is 100% real. Kim Stolz words it best when she says, “We’re all not exactly the same person online that we are in real life. I am not as happy as my Instagram makes me look. We are all heightening the positives and downplaying the negatives”.

Due to these expectations, people compare their own real lives to the edited ones that they see on social media, and this is where an even larger issue emerges. Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have found that “…those who visited social media sites 58 or more times per week were around three times as likely to feel socially isolated than those who visited these sites less than nine times per week” (2014). This proves that having a “social life” online does not provide the same benefits as having a social life offline and engaging with others in the real world.

References-

Thomson, A. (2017, March). Canadians spend more time online at expense of face-to-face time. Retrieved from https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/canadians-spend-more-time-online-at-expense-of-face-to-face-time-1.3333902.

Those who spend more time on social media feel more socially isolated. CTV News. Retrieved May 9, 2018 from https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/those-who-spend-more-time-on-social-media-feel-more-socially-isolated-study-1.3314694.