Why Social Media Within Our Future Generations Will Doom Us All

In a world filled with iPhones, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, we no longer have to call the house phone of our friends and have that awkward conversation with the parents, nor do we have to email or write to each other. I can ask my friend how their day was in a two second time period. Yes, it’s amazing, and yes, it just saves so much more time...but we’re now in 2018 and I feel that social constructs really depict our lives. I’m a 20-year-old musical theatre student and even my course tutors let us know what room we’re in for the day via a private Facebook group.

The other day, I uploaded a photo on Instagram. I did it because I wanted to not only update my feed, but to, admittedly, get some attention—along with every other social media user. I can’t lie and say I wasn’t unfazed when, within ten minutes of an upload, I only received three likes...but I’m not a Kardashian, so I can’t expect a lot. I start to really sink the thought in my head; since when did I really care about likes and how many I get on my posts—why is that the crux of my attention seeking needs? And then the obvious answer seeps through my phone screen...SOCIAL MEDIA.

At first, social media was Bebo, MySpace, MSN, and even YouTube, in some cases —while we weren’t exactly as technologically and socially advanced in the early 2000s, it was still a good platform, and I remember being so happy that I was my younger peers' "friend of the week" on their profiles. It was attention that just felt so cool. But what does it actually mean? Why do we need to justify ourselves for being the most followed or the most popular?

Now, over a decade later, we have Instagram, iPhones, instant messaging, and yes...smart phones; portable mobile devices that completely zone in the youth of today and shut them out from the rest of the world. I don’t think I’ve actually seen someone in their early teens without an iPhone or some sort of smart phone. Even children as young as six/seven are asking for iPads and iPhones for Christmas or birthdays! When I was that age, I just wanted to play with Bratz dolls.

Not only that, but the new updates for these apps are a complete invasion of privacy; Snapchat now have Snapmaps in which you can see the location of your friends around the world, so in short: a stalker app. Youth nowadays will risk their own lives just to get the perfect selfie. Are we that self-obsessed that we’re willing to fall off a building or get electrocuted just in order to get that perfect lighting or background for our self-obsessed profile?

I’ve never been one to conform to a certain trend or be a follower. I do count myself as a leader. In some cases, I think the more people jump on the next trend and be in with the crowd, it makes you just that...a follower. Why be Michelle if you could be Beyoncé?