Social media envy

According to a report I read on clientheartbeat.com customers averagely use their phones over 150 times a day! That’s a whole lot of times to use one particular device. These days we have brand influencers, social media influencers, social media entrepreneurs and even people becoming moguls just by assiduously doing business on social media, digital marketing steadily overtaking traditional marketing, the list of what can be achieved through social media is endless.

People have found their voices through this powerful media, people found help and solutions on social media, marriages have been formed, friendships, business partnerships. Need I mention that social media is a powerful tool of knowledge, gazillions of resources online. How to breathe, how to die, how to sleep...just ask Google and information is at your fingertips.

Even with all this good, and a lot more I did not mention and some of us still sometimes ‘hate’ social media, apart from the usual reasons like addictive use, a lot of us neglect our other activities and spend many hours prowling the net, children could access the wrong sites and be exposed to the wrong and probably damaging content, the increasing lack of privacy especially with all the information on your life available to several other users easily.

A while back someone asked me how he could use certain sites and not leave any website history anywhere. I told him, you can only go incognito on your device, but your internet provider, the government which includes the police and your employer can have access to your browsing history if they have need for it.

So if you are crawling all over porn sites or sites that can be linked to terrorist activities or organizations, or scam then deleting browsing history or using the incognito tab on your device, you can still be found honey.

Now to the other reasons people could probably have a love-hate relationship is the envious or jealous emotions it could spark in you.

Career Depression on LinkedIn

Sometime ago I read on LinkedIn about something called Career Depression and how it usually strikes people around January of every year.

People tend to take stock of the previous year and realize sadly that nothing really changed in their lives, no new jobs, no promotions, in summary no feather to their career cap and then when you go on LinkedIn you see your peers working wonders literarily, new gig with an industry leading firm, taking pictures with CEOs in different countries around the globe and there you are faced with an uncertain future at your company, or a boring job with little or no career advancement prospects. It could be worse, probably no job at all.

All the Colorful Lives on Facebook

In my opinion, Facebook is like a high octane, very busy marketplace, things are brought to life on Facebook, information reaching hundreds of millions quickly and somehow in all the activities, we still have time to observe who looks great and who looks like he is ‘struggling to bubble’ I ran into an old friend and she told me going to Facebook sometimes elicits envious emotions from her because everyone seems to be getting married, or celebrating children’s birthdays, or celebrating their mothers and mother-in-laws, or writing long epistles about how awesome and perfect their marriage/partner is and has been.

There seems to be no place for you if you are not doing-something. Another friend said she had to deactivate when an old acquaintance after noticing she wasn’t active on Facebook but still had an account, sent her a message requesting to know when my friend will find herself a husband. Usually on Facebook people put their edited lives on display, taunting and if you are not strong, spewing lies calculated to impress their followers/friends.

If you want to announce something, do it on Facebook, trust me your friends and enemies will know, even if they don’t acknowledge it with ‘likes and comments’ they are taking notes.

Aesthetic, Social and Economic Relevance on Instagram

Instagram is really full of smart people, they wake you up with the smartest quotes, pictures and videos. Everyone is attending one gig or the other, receiving awards, celebrating 100k+ followers or building an awesome business on instagram.

You wake up to a bright, young, always motivated, upbeat crowd all in one place. Everyone reminding you to make good use of your time on earth, be impactful.

The instagram crowd is full of influential people in their endeavors who know how to, or are mastering the art of maintaining their relevance in today’s fast paced world, actors, models, startup company founders, boss babes, game-changers, ‘small girls with BIG Gods’, you name it.

My neighbor unfollowed a smart young woman who is ‘an instagram entrepreneur ‘who according to my neighbor, wasn’t really trying to inspire her followers, she was actually showing off in her opinion. I tend to agree, more like the ‘pepper them gang’ phrase trending now.

Instagram is also full of glass ceilings being shattered by ordinary women and men, getting rewarded for hard work, sometimes after years of trying and failing, fun lifestyles, handsome grooms, beautiful brides and dream weddings. If one is not careful, you could spend long hours going through perfect pictures from around the world, pictures that when compared to your life, may paint your reality as a dreary existence.

Well dear friends, while I can say it’s a total waste of energy to let yourself wallow in self-pity over airbrushed photos and a few nice quotes, I do agree that some the activities of its users can be mildly annoying but I love the way social media is helping people achieve their dreams and find their voice when no one else would have heard them. Envy should not consume us, we should not sit in that little corner doubting that people are actually as happy and as successful.

More importantly we should not be hypocritical users claiming ‘I don’t do Facebook it’s too loud there, I hate instagram because of all the fake people/businesses everywhere there, LinkedIn in now full of scammers etc., I still don’t understand Twitter ’. There are in actual fact too many positives, please ‘don’t dull’, stop sulking and step into the sunshine!

Written by Chineze Ademola-Aina