Social Anxiety

We live is a world of comparison and likes and comparison in comments. We base our worth on what the world says about us and how popular we look on social media. We have grown our influence to a global reach and stepped out of a handful of close friends. We are getting influence and feedback on our lives from people who don't even know who we are.

We are so connected to the world yet we are so overwhelmed and struggling with social anxiety at rates we have never experienced before. We want to be an influencer but we don't want the judgement of others.

How can this be a healthy way of living and getting critique. There used to be a time where the only people giving you advice were the people living around you watching your life. They could evaluate and see your circumstances and make suggestions based on what they see. This kind of avice or critique is constructive and given with backing support. The kind of advice we receive from social media is backed in other's opinions and not in facts or understanding of your life circumstances.

With social media comes risks of anxiety and depression research tells us. When you're dealing with the comparison game you get caught up feeling lesser then someone else. We compare our lives lowest points to other people's highlight reel that they post of Instagram. This is not a fair point of comparison but it is the easiest. As time goes on more and more people jump onto the social media game. "According to the Pew Research Center, 69% of adults and 81% of teens in the U.S. use social media." That is a terrifying statistic. Teens are the most vulnerable age group of people with so much change happening in their lives.

Today we see a skyrocket in teen anxiety and depression and wonder why that could be. We try medicating our kids and just end up with zombies who don't know what up and down is. It's a catastrophe. When we are feeling down or lonely we post a picture on our feed hoping to get comments encouraging us and watch as the like count goes up. We find our value in the opinion of strangers.

Now imagine a world where we lost our biggest connector, the internet. We would probably be more connected then ever. We live in a time where we can more connected than ever but we lose our most important connections by having our face stuck to our phones. If we grew up in a time where our only connection is people we had contact with in real life then our social circle would be much smaller. We think this is a bad thing but in reality it just may be the most healthy thing for us.

Even though comparing ourselves with others is a bad thing but we are human and it will always be apart of our nature. If we are going to compare ourselves with someone else wouldn't it be much better to compare our complete life, the ups and downs to someone else's full life; instead of comparing our struggles to the best part of someone else's life.

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