Living in a world dominated by Social Media means that we are constantly exposed with the in's and out's of other people's lives, where they're on holiday, what they're having for dinner, what they're wearing that day etc etc.
With 60 million pictures uploaded to Instagram everyday and thousands of tweets per second on Twitter it makes it difficult for us to be satisfied with our own lives. Watching celebrities go about there stylish, exciting day to day lives in exciting places like Hollywood, Los Angeles, Chelsea - eating in 5* restaurants, visiting 5* luxury hotels, can lead to 'Life-envy' upon opening these social media sites.
Many people feel absolutely fine about themselves, and fine about there lives until they see what there friends or other people are up to on Facebook, a recent article told me. Once you've seen that your Facebook friend has had a brilliant weekend and is loving life, it makes you feel the need to share your most exciting memory from the past few days on the internet - just to prove you are not boring old sod. This comes under the FOMO addiction, which stands for the fear of missing out.
People today, due to the over powering need to check social media, have become connected to this fear of missing out. Even if out with friends, shopping or on a date, people feel an overpowering need to check facebook, twitter, snapchat etc just incase something interesting is happening, just incase there missing out on something, just incase somethings happened that they NEED to know.
The addiction also includes updating social media on what you yourself are up to, the need to share with others that you are on holiday, or eating out because if you don't your internet friends may think well.. what? Why is it that we feel we need to share so much of our lives with the internet? Why does your 789 Facebook friends need to know what your at McDonalds with your cousin? Or that you enjoyed your cup of tea watching Coronation Street.
Will we ever be completely satisfied in our own lives or are we going to continue to be swamped in the importance of others. The scariest thought is that technology is still in its early stages compared to the possibilities for technology to come in the future.
The main point I'm wanting to stress in this post is that i think we should all take a moment to step back, and appreciate life for what it is, we all have interesting and unique lives, each different to the next. You may be jealous of someone else for eating in a certain restaurant or for visiting a certain place, but they might be just as jealous for something you've done. The concept of FOMO is interesting and scary, but we should embrace it rather than letting it take over. Allow it to better ourselves, do better in ourselves, not to appear better on the internet.
Disclaimer: I promise I do not hate technology, I realise that this is the second post i've done on the negative sides of technology, but I do value it too. I just value real life more.
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