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By Katie Newton
My fiancé has never had social media. He’s never ranked his top friends on Myspace, never tried to learn a TikTok dance. Never known the practically universal experience of spending an afternoon on the sofa doom-scrolling Instagram.
I can’t say the same. I’ve been a self-confessed comparison junkie since I was a child. Some of my earliest memories are of comparing everything from my Kickers school shoes to my Claire’s backpack with the other girls in my year. Of mentally measuring my body against the rest of my ballet class in the mirror. I was constantly trying to rank myself and figure out where I fit.
Where once these comparisons were against fifteen or twenty of my peers, thanks to social media, I can now compare everything from what I eat for breakfast to where I go on holiday with millions of strangers from all over the world. And all from the comfort of my own home.
Social Media & The Thief of Comparison
For those of us who are compelled to compare ourselves to others – and I know I’m not alone here – apps like Instagram and TikTok are both ambrosia and cyanide.
They lure us in with the promise of a quick dopamine fix, only to leave us feeling small. I ran my first marathon last year and when I finished it, rather than feeling elated at the finish line I felt a twist of disappointment at the time I’d got – because I was comparing myself with strangers whose times I wouldn’t even know if not for #runtok.
I can go for a twenty-kilometre jog on a Saturday morning, but if I pick up my phone at the end while I sip my coffee, with wild hair and a sweaty face, the endorphins and sense of achievement can quickly be replaced by FOMO if I see a friend who spent the morning glammed up at a bottomless brunch instead. On the days I skip the run for a lie-in and a coffee with a friend, I find myself gravitating towards the people in my feed who’ve been up since the crack of dawn for Pilates.
It doesn’t seem to matter what I do; there’s always someone doing the opposite, making me feel like I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.
On a deeper level, watching other people’s lives play out in real time can open a whole host of reminders of the things I should be doing, a smorgasbord of contradictory options.
Having children vs. being blissfully child-free. Travelling vs. climbing the career ladder vs. embracing slow living. Eating clean vs. lifting weights vs. loving my body the way it is. Drinking coffee vs. drinking matcha. Going sober vs. ordering another glass of rosé.
There are so many options out there, so many opinions, so many ways to do life, that it starts to feel like I can’t win.
The Myth of Perfection
The thing about comparing yourself, especially on the global scale that social media enables, is that it doesn’t matter how well you’re doing, it can still create a sense of failure. It can still trigger a sense of urgency: that you’re missing out, that you’re not doing enough, that you’re doing life wrong. Instagram-fuelled comparison can keep me in a vortex of questions, always ultimately arriving at the conclusion that I’m not good enough.
I do appreciate the creators who push “social media vs. reality” and play a part in unravelling the myth of perfection that these apps can perpetuate. However, as #instagramvsreality has become a trend, sometimes even the posts that claim to show reality can be so beautifully curated that a couple of minutes of scrolling can take me from satisfied with my lot, to questioning all my life choices.
While in theory it’s easy to just tell myself that “social media is a highlight reel”, that everyone is showing their best bits, that the glossy façade people present on the internet isn’t reality; in practice, it can still be hard to persuade myself that their “highlights” aren’t just that little bit better than mine.
Of course, the simple answer would be just to delete the apps altogether and remove that sinister barometer. But it’s not that easy, is it? I’ve lived away from many of my friends and family for almost ten years; right now, I’m living in a different country.
For all its unhealthy traits, social media is also how I stay connected to the people I love, and knowing what’s going on in their lives day-to-day is important to me. It’s been a great way to meet people and find new places in the country I’m now living (Mallorca) – so just going cold turkey isn’t the answer, either. For all that I have FOMO for the life I could live if I wasn’t so tied to apps on my phone, I also have a fear of what I’d miss if I didn’t have them.
Key Take-Aways
Ultimately, then, it’s a balancing act. To help separate reality from curated online moments, over time I’ve developed some ground rules for myself:
⏰Not doomscrolling first thing in the morning, or last thing at night. I don’t want to start or end my days with images of other people’s “perfect” lives weighing on me, so instead, I make sure to spend at least an hour or so in the real world before picking up my phone. Going for a run. Having coffee with my partner. Yoga. Watching the sunrise. Prioritising my own real life before checking in on other people’s. Likewise, I try my best to put my phone down an hour before bed and pick up a book instead.
😔Noticing when I’m using social media as a tool to berate myself. I’ve learned that I’m extra vulnerable to the comparison trap when I'm feeling low. When I’m feeling happy and confident and enjoying life, I can use social media in the right way – to get inspired, to connect with the people I love, to unwind. When I’m feeling lonely or down, or facing challenges, I can just as easily use it as an insidious form of self-destruction. Being honest with myself about how I’m feeling, why I’m scrolling more, and stepping away from the apps at these times is important.
⚙️Hacking the algorithm for more feel-good content. I’m no technology expert, but it’s well-established that these apps feed us more of the same content we look at and engage with, thanks to their underlying algorithms. That means if we’re constantly looking at glamorous influencers who make us feel bad about ourselves, Instagram will “helpfully” keep churning out content that reinforces that self-doubt. I’ve been experimenting with using this to my advantage by unfollowing accounts that don’t make me feel good and flicking past their content.
These days, I make sure I’m following accounts that are authentic, honest and realistic, and showcase the things I truly value and want to spend time on, rather than the things I can easily get distracted by. This can change over time depending on what my priorities are, so I don’t feel bad about muting or unfollowing certain accounts when I’m trying to focus on a different aspect of life. Remember, social media is a tool for you, not the other way around.
📵Using an app blocker. I recently downloaded an app called one sec (this isn’t an ad 😉), which makes you take a deep breath every time open a certain app. This forces me to take a second to think about whether I really want to go ahead and open Instagram or TikTok, or whether I’m just opening the app for a distraction or out of habit (often, I find it’s the latter).
🥳Celebrating what I have. The thing about social media and influencers is that a large part of their revenues rely on showing us what we don’t have. Advertisers can’t make money if they can’t convince us that there’s something we’re missing, if they can’t persuade us that this one product is the thing we need to finally fill the gap, the piece we’ve been missing. The defence against this is remembering how much we already have.
It feels a bit silly and self-indulgent, but one trick I deploy when I feel that familiar sense of envy and self-loathing creeping in is to look back at my own Instagram feed and notice all the good things it’s filled with already. From the little things: sunrises and coffee art and books I loved; to the bigger ones: holidays and achievements and parties. It helps to take a step back and remember that other people could be looking at my own pictures with the same sense of envy I feel when I look at theirs.
Of course, none of this is an off switch for FOMO, or a quick fix. Comparison is an evolutionary defence mechanism that humans developed over centuries: it’s not something we can “stop” just like that.
But I think that taking these steps, setting these ground rules, is helping me shift the balance, making social media more of a positive thing than a hinderance to my life. If I feel a fear of missing out, these days it’s less about what other people are doing and more about not wanting to miss out on my own life.
Which brings me to the final trick – knowing when to put down the phone, step away and go out into the real world. It’s a cliché, but life really is so short.
At the end of the day, I don’t want to spend mine wishing my time away on someone else’s idea of how life should be. And neither should you.
HAPHE is a non-profit charity committed to trauma-induced depression prevention. You can learn more about our cause here. Want to get involved? Why not take part in our Short Film Project or Tell Your Story?
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