The corpse of Gabby Petito lies under a small plastic canopy somewhere in the 300,000 acres of Grand Teton National Park. Her thousands of YouTube and Instagram followers are shocked. One of them commenting, “she’s so young and looked so happy!”
Oh, yes, the couple did look happy. They posted pictures and videos of themselves in beautiful places, dancing, kissing, and just generally living an amazing life as they traveled together posting constantly to their 126,000 followers.
No one knows what went wrong. Who posts pictures of themselves with a swollen face after being hit by their spouse, or videos of taking out the garbage? Nope. Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are filled with filtered, touched up, and even entirely faked moments that portray people as having perfect bodies, perfect relationships, perfect children, and perfect lives. Then people foolishly compare their families, their lives, and their bodies with an ideal that doesn’t really exist.
A Wall Street Journal headline last week: “Facebook Knows Instagram is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show.” The (leaked) Facebook study reports that a whopping 32 percent of teen girls said that posts on Instagram negatively affect their self image. For others, there are bigger problems. Teen suicide is up almost 58 percent in the last decade. The affects of cyberbullying, soaring standards of beauty and performance, and peer pressure is a cocktail that can be lethal.
Thousands compared their lives with the posts of Gabby and her boyfriend, traveling like two lovebirds across the country. Their followers’ lives seemed dull in comparison to the non-stop romance and adventure, but it wasn’t real. Apparently the couple had a public brawl, were engaged by police, and after August, Gabby’s parents never heard from her again. The next thing you know, her body is found and her boyfriend is gone.
Does that sound like a perfect life? It is approximately as perfect (and accurate) as half the pictures and videos posted on social media. Sure, lots of folks use social media in a responsible and honest way. A filter for them is something they put in their furnace. But for others, somewhere between the addition of photo editors and the “teeth whitening tool” people became masters at making themselves look absolutely nothing like they actually look. Much of what we see is simply not real.
Our kids need to understand that social media is society’s biggest lie. People who bully are really cowards; perfect faces and bodies do not exist; and relationships do not remain in a constantly idyllic state. Approximately six hundred B.C., the writers of Proverbs had all this pretty much figured out. It says, “These are things God hates: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and the shedding of innocent blood.”
Sounds like what’s wrong with social media in a nutshell.
Nancy
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