[Quality] Flexing, Exaggerating, Lying, and Love: How Social Media Impacts Our Perceptions of Others, of Ourselves, and has Unforeseen Consequences.

Flexing, Exaggerating, Lying, and Love: How Social Media Impacts Our Perceptions of Others, of Ourselves, and has Unforeseen Consequences.

When we are born into the world, we do not know how to behave (Lewis, Amini, Lannon, Chapter 3). We’ll know how to breathe, but how to react in certain situations is not instinctive. Indeed, our mothers are our teachers of emotional intelligence. If you give a baby a spoon and he or she throws it on the ground, besides it being a gravity experiment, he or she will learn how to react from his or her mother. There is no doubt this is unlikely to change; children will learn basic emotional intelligence and behavior from the world around them. Touching a hot stove will always shock us, giving mother a hug will usually make her smile, and pooping on the floor will make mom upset; however, there is a separation between basic and advanced emotional intelligence, and some of those cannot be learned from our mothers. Yes, we can learn how to behave in a funeral, but other behaviors are more complex. One of the most complicated issues requiring advanced emotional intelligence is our behavior and ability to read emotions in a relationship. Mothers and fathers can instil ideas into their children; however, because love and relationships are abstract concepts, we teach love in a way incongruent to the way love and relationships are experienced in the world. A mother and father may share their only their best stories, omitting most bi-weekly fights. Disney movies may tell a child how a relationship ought to be experienced; however, fights with parents contradict Disney’s marriages, or perhaps, a child will wonder whether their parents relationship is unhealthy. Even in the best of relationships, the lessons taught to their children through bible verses may not apply because no two relationships are the exact same. The complexity and varying definitions of love should be a surprise to most adults; the Merriam-Webster contains over ten definitions of the word. Something has, however, changed our perceptions even more than ever. Instead of being told how love and relationships work, we can seek, interpret, and dare I say understand it for ourselves through mediums beside literature or film, but from everyone. I’m of course, referencing the recent popularity and power of social media, skewing our ideas of love drastically more than ever.

How exactly is social media skewing our ideas of love? Has social media truly “drastically” changed our ideas of love, or is this an exaggeration? Have action movies drastically changed the way we live our lives? When growing up, we quickly learn physical fighting achieves far less than a civil conversation namely because of the consequences which follow. When we view a Marvel superhero film and watch twenty buildings blow up, even as children, we understand we are watching fiction. The obvious consequences of prison or in worse cases, historical examples such as the civil war teach us the importance of civility. So - have Marvel movies drastically changed our ideas of civility? Probably not. In contrast, love is an abstract concept. If you ask someone what Civility means, he or she may speak in great lengths about its importance. Ask that same person how to love a significant other, however, and they will freeze. Disney depicts one idea, our parents exhibit another, and the social media post you saw of a dinner date are incongruent with each other. Will they even have an answer?

“The IRL Fetish” by Nathan Jurgenson, published in The New Inquiry in 2012 can help explain. Jurgenson claims we are using our devices more than ever before. He even pokes fun at us for calling it a phone because of the root word “phone,” meaning sound (Jurgenson). Yes, we rarely make phone calls, however, I think the name is quite fitting. Phones, and other internet-connected devices have transformed into devices impeding our lives with increasing amounts of information (Jurgenson). The “sound” of us talking into a phone has only been replaced by the sound of a phone talking through us… through a push notification. Because of these notifications, living a life without the internet is becoming increasingly popular to a point of absurdity (Jurgenson). Jurgenson argues our online presence, particularly social media is a part of our reality and this idea of returning to a life offline is as irrational as fetishizing vinyl in the age of MP3 players; it is not only irrational, but even more so ridiculous (Jurgenson). 

Now, Jurgenson’s claims focuses on the fetishization of the past, but social media is causing us to fetishize the present. We’ve already explored how hearing our parents’ stories skew our vision and how Disney skews our idea of love; however, because of this rapid increase in information accessibility, social media is revolutionizing the way society understands love. The reason?: our desire to be perfect.

“Escape from the Matrix,” written by Jacob Burack, published in 2014 develops this idea of perfectionism. Like Jurgenson, Burack implies our immersive behavior online is real, claiming we face “an incessant flow of information” (Burack). Burack takes this idea a step further to develop an ideology coined as the “fear of missing out” (Burack). Whereas Jurgenson establishes we are faced with an increased amount of information, Burack’s “fear of missing out” further develops social media’s role in our lives. Burack describes the fear of missing out as an uneasy feeling you obtain when you miss out on something more interesting happening elsewhere (Burack). Because of our perpetual access to information and notifications grabbing our attention, some people are driven towards perfection (Burack). Perfection, in Burack’s sense applies to people in many ways whether it be romantically or professionally, like “those of us heavily invested in work who also fear missing an opportunity for professional advancement or a profitable deal” (Burack). Romantically, “we are afraid of missing out on love and on ... the feeling that we belong” (Burack). Focusing on the romantic aspect, finding perceived happier couples on social media platforms cause us to second guess our own relationships. If I was dating a girl, after a dinner date, I might compare our existing relationship to another couple who flew to London or a different couple who is posting about their service trip together; it may reflect poorly on my own relationship.

To recapitulate, Nathan Jurgenson argues we are using technology more than ever and despite our desires to live offline, our desires to live offline are meaningless because our online presence is ingrained in us; it is part of our reality. Jacob Burack affirms Jurgenson’s point about the rise of social media use and extends beyond that to suggest it causes us to to strive for perfection.

Is this desire for perfection necessary, or is it unhealthy? I think we are asking the wrong question. See, we do not desire to be perfect; instead, we desire to appear perfect. We look at others’ online presences and, in response, craft a photo or experience with a message incongruent with our own reality. In simpler words, we are seeing fake things, being fake, saying fake things, and believing other people’s fake things. That last part - believing in other people’s online presence being incongruent with their reality; it seems like a stretch upon first glance; however, to a significant degree, it is true. Today, we live in a post-scientific country ran by a president who can persuade an audience to panic about immigration despite factual and scientific contradiction in several disciplines. 

When the leader of the world’s most powerful country turns away from the facts, others follow. Hanna Rosin, co-host of NPR’s Invisibilia explains that “What people say about things is more important than what things are” (Rosin et. al.). A bold conclusion to the fascinating story of Naquan Lewis, who was convicted of two crimes: illegal gun possession and gang participation (Rosin et. Al). I was appalled by the evidence: “the concrete evidence that Naquan illegally possessed a gun was the video” (Rosin et. al). The video is not surveillance footage, nor taken by someone else. This video was created by “Naquan and his brother” which ended up in the hands of police in a separate murder case. Naquan’s home was searched by police who found no gun was found; there is no other evidence. The evidence for gang participation is “a pile of messages and social media photos of kids hanging out, wearing “Only My Brothers” sweatshirts, making hand symbols, flashing guns ... in which Naquan shows up in only one or two photos” (Rosin et. al). There is no other evidence of gang affiliation. Frankly, I was appalled this charge even went to court, I was appalled he was convicted, and I was appalled his attorney convinced him to plead guilty because “in her experience, if prosecutors throw up a bunch of pictures and videos of kids looking like gangsters, even if her client is just kind of in the general neighborhood of those kids, he’d be in trouble” (Rosin et. al.)

So what can we make of this case where facts are undervalued, photos are posted on social media and a self-recorded video places a likely innocent man in prison? Social media provides us with “an incredible shortcut for gathering information,” but Rosin warns us that “the shortcuts aren’t actually that reliable ... they’re not that dependable, which can create a dangerous situation because, as we all know, there are always some people who are more clever or shameless about manipulating those signals and images to others” (Rosin et. al.). These shortcuts of gathering information and manipulating them extend to relationships. What we post on social media can have serious consequences. We, in fact, sometimes believe the content posted by someone more than the actual facts. Pictures of guns and money on Instagram believed to not represent real life, do matter because social media influences us more than our real life appearances (Rosin et. al.). Pictures of couples and kisses do too.

When it comes to understanding love, social media influences us in a few ways. First, as already mentioned, information is more readily available. It’s easy to look at other couples enjoying dates and movies and feel left out, sometimes even causing us to question our own relationships. Second, social media restricts how we convey ourselves depending on the platform. You cannot post a 5-minute video on Snapchat nor does Instagram allow one to caption one’s work; though there are exceptions with the comments section and text in the photo itself. The logic, expectations and restrictions of a platform stop us from conveying our most genuine selves. Lastly, there is an expectation within ourselves to appear perfect on social media. Our definitions of perfection are exclusive to ourselves; however, for most people, achieving it requires us to find small, selective moments of our own reality and crafting posts by removing context in a way making the post incongruent with our actual experiences of reality. As I am writing, a colleague is sitting across from me doing homework; however, her phone lights up and almost immediately, I see her lift up her phone so it is level with her head, make an exaggerated smile, take a photo, send it, and return to her homework multiple times. Did that smile last more than the one second to take the photo? Absolutely not. Yet on the other end, whoever she sent that smile to will see an inauthentic smile. In person, do we smile when we see someone familiar out of courtesy? Sure we do; however, in person, there is more context. I would not make direct eye contact to an acquaintance for 30 seconds smiling as I walk past him without changing my facial expression. Instead, that acquaintance would see me smile for a moment, perhaps say hello, and perhaps even strike up a conversation as we observe each others’ body language which are rarely done through our use of social media. This exaggeration of oneself on social media, of course, extends beyond a smile; it extends throughout one’s entire social media presence from what one posts and what photos they share. Of course this person is received by others differently.

All in all, social media influences us more than we think. We may lie to ourselves and each other and pretend our online presence is not too meaningful, but people carefully use it to maintain a perfect image of ourselves. Those images of ourselves are taken seriously as others may and will interpret our online presence as our offline presence; however, to a degree, our online presence is incongruent to our offline reality. If we continue to consume inauthentic, fake content and strive for perfectionism beyond what is achievable in reality, we will lose sight of reality, and because we lose sight of reality, we will lose sight of ourselves.

Works Cited

Burak, Jacob. “Escape From The Matrix.” Aeon, Aeon, 21 Mar. 2019, aeon.co/essays/can-we-break-free-from-the-fear-of-missing-out.

Jurgenson, Nathan. “The IRL Fetish.” The New Inquiry, 2 Oct. 2017, thenewinquiry.com/the-irl-fetish/.

Rosin, Hanna, et al. “Point, Shoot.” NPR: Invisibilia, Season 5, Episode 2.

“Three: Archimedes' Principle.” A General Theory of Love, by Thomas Lewis et al., Vintage Books, 2001, pp. 41–65.