I don’t have the emotional or the physical energy to write
about how social media is negatively affecting our lives, it’s already been
said. I don’t want to reiterate how people have been using their social media
pages to post exaggerated versions of their lives, successes, achievements,
friendships, families and romances, that argument is just as old and exhausted.
It’s nauseating how as people we’ve become incapable of living without an
audience. I tried social media twice and gave it up both time, deciding it
really was a lot of crap, a waste of time, and has absolutely nothing to do
with human connection, but had everything to do with obsessing over other
people’s lives, unhealthy arguments about politics and religion, destructive
criticism, passing judgements, and stalking people.
But even when you’re not on social media, you can still be haunted
by it. As I went on the internet to check my e-mail. My Yahoo home page gave me
the daily newsfeed, the top, most popular story was Mark Zuckerberg’s “touching”
post on facebook, announcing his wife’s pregnancy. They were so happy, so
blessed, especially when they thought they couldn’t have another child,
especially when they found out it’s a girl. And how much they’ve always wanted
a girl, and how Mark was so lucky to have grown up with three sisters, who
taught him how to be strong and successful, how loving and caring his sisters
were towards him, how supportive they all were of each other. How his wife grew
up with two sisters and how they were each other’s rock, always there for each
other, all the inside jokes that only loving caring siblings can have. Mark and
his wife looked so happy, so in love, so strong, so lucky, so like people who
had everything.
I wish I didn’t read about Mark, I wish I didn’t have to know
how lucky Mark and his wife are, how amazing their sisters were, how loyal,
loving, and supportive families can be. How deprived I am, how far away my
reality was, how little I had. I don’t envy Mark, but I could have gone without
having my deprivation deepened, pronounced, underlined, and put into
perspective. I don’t know how much I can turn away from the abundance others
have. How guilty I feel when I can’t feel happy for other people’s boundless
blessings. How much I scold and shame myself for reading such things; “you
could have not looked, you could have ignored, you could have not clicked”. How
much can one close one’s eyes, pretend, look away in order to survive, in order
to get through the day intact. And then more shame and guilt; how much deprivation
does someone like me trigger in a less fortunate life; someone with a disability,
someone terminally ill, someone homeless, someone living in a warzone.
