• collaborative post
I’ve been in the social media biz for seven years now, since transitioning over from freelance magazine journalism. As much as I adore it, there are definitely times when I take a step back and shake my head at what a truly weird world it is.
A world where, if your child takes a comedy tumble, you take a photo before picking them up. When your brain thinks in snappy Facebook quotes rather than actual sentences. Where you can’t go past a pretty floor without Instagramming your feet with the hashtag #IHaveThisThingWithTiles.
You’re nodding now, aren’t you?!
And now this social media obsession has now leaked out to the wider public. The girls and I have been to a couple of community festivals this summer, and everyone seemed to be videoing the acts rather than watching them.
I get that people want to keep things for posterity, but there’s a certain irony in making the effort to attend a live event (and in some cases paying a lot of money for the privilege) only to end up watching it via a tiny phone screen.
Social media has become the way we get our validation. We put up photos, then eagerly await the comments and likes. If they don’t come in the numbers we were expecting, we feel deflated.
We’re so busy editing these moments to make them as glamorous as possible that sometimes we’re forgetting to actually enjoy them in real life.
This new IKEA film ‘Let’s Relax’ is poking fun at the phenomenon, but it’s also reminding us to stop constantly trying to keep up appearances. Reality is never as polished as it appears on social media, so sometimes we just need to put down the cameraphones and enjoy a meal together – whether it’s picture perfect, or not.
Image ‘Taking Photos of Tacos with Smartphone‘, courtesy of Shutterstock
What a gorgeous film.
So true and I’ve been feeling this even more over the summer as everyone needs to show the world how wonderful their holiday or outings with the kids are. Oddly it annoys me more in facebook than it does on instagram or blogs because instagram is purely photos – that’s the point of it, and blogs are for writing about what you do. I don’t know why I feel fb should be above all that when I blog and most of my friend don’t.