Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Tumblr. Tinder. Snapchat. These companies have somehow ruled the world over the last decade. Governments work day and night to prevent threats to their democracies or republics while the biggest threat sits right in front of them. We talk about free will and the freedom to do whatever we want while we are controlled by an application on our phones. We firmly assert that we are independent people and don’t care about what others think of us while we are editing photos of ourselves to artificially become more attractive.

Because social media exists, there is no such thing as the truth anymore. It has created a world where a photoshopped person is the new so-called “perfect” figure, and other people end up looking up to these figures. They start to set expectations for themselves and elevate their standards all according to these “perfect” people. It has lowered others’ self-esteem just because they know that they can’t look like those people on the covers of magazines. Of course they can’t look like them! These idolized bodies were completely changed into something which seems perfect and flawless. Another example of social media hiding truths is that it is too easy to create a fake profile. Thousands of people have been tricked into becoming Facebook friends with someone or accepting a follow request only to find that that “someone” is actually a fake profile. In other words, that person may be telling false personal information or the person might not even exist.

Furthermore, people are too connected to social media. Everywhere you go, there are people just looking at their phones; it’s almost rare to see any communication with strangers because everyone’s always just stuck in their own virtual worlds. The way that we interact with people has even changed. In fact, I’ve seen people who message someone who is in the same house as they are.

I would love to offer a solution to you, but I simply am not able to think of one. The world of social media is only going to progress from here on, and there is no way of stopping it. According to the Pew Research Center, the growth of social media has been drastically increasing from 2010 to 2018. Also, people aren’t even able to let go of their phones. Looking at the New York Times, some people who’ve tried to boycott tech companies’ products have failed to do so because these tech giants are just too persuasive. You can’t escape technology and social media because it is always going to be there.

However, there is the alternative of being a little more social without the use of social media. For instance, people can talk and converse with one another instead of typing away on their phones or using emojis. There are different ways to explore the world around us and meet new people; let’s use this opportunity to change while we still can.