Writing Resources
In 2015 I spent a year abroad attending an American high school Aside from the more obvious cultural differences such as language and food I experienced something unexpected that affected the way I started to view and feel about myself After a few weeks I started to feel that social media was the most important way to present myself to my new peers I started feeling the need to document every experience and share them online otherwise they didn't count If there was no evidence of the fun I was having I must be a boring person I began to let likes define my worth and I started judging those around accordingly It wasn't long before this mentality began to wear me down Everyone knows social media is fake but we don't act like it is fake And that got me thinking why do we feel the need to share and capture everything we do Why do we let this affect the way we feel about ourselves and others This mentality manifested itself in me and it was hard to change my perspective Because being around people who see social media as their number one priority affected my behaviour I never had the intention of letting my online personality define who I was Regardless of how cliché it sounds I never expected those little fearful voices in my head to branch so deeply Don t get me wrong social media sites can be useful to keep in touch with friends and family But people are not aware of the consequences of social media I obviously wasn't I felt the pressure of social media Our generation is the first one testing this fast growing medium
