"You have to see this website."
This is how it usually starts. My friend pulls up the site of an accomplished, beautiful, married with children woman who has a crazy impressive website filled with all sorts of design work for major companies. Then she clicks on the bio. This wunderkind also happens to be 24, a full two years younger than me. And so we begin to spiral into complaining about our jobs, relationships (and lack thereof), and everything else that just plain sucks about our lives.
I've repeated this cycle thousands of times in the last three years, and I have always been at a loss as to how it started and how to stop it. And it needed to stop. After every session of this nonsense I left feeling like a complete and utter failure. I struggled, unsuccessfully, to define what we were dealing with here. Jealousy? Discontent? Narcissism? While I'm sure all three of those played their part, the main culprit surprised me. It was the Internet itself.
Unraveling the details of how the Internet was seemingly destroying my confidence was a slow task. The first clue came from a post on Cup of Jo, Motherhood Mondays: The Hardest Two Months of My Life. In the post she describes a bout of depression she went through. What I found the most interesting was that she linked to a post she had written when she was feeling "terrible and insecure". The post was Sneak Peak: Wedding Line from Anthropologie!. With one exclamation point in the title and four more in the text, I'd say it's an upbeat piece. It's definitely not something you'd expect from someone battling depression and insecurity.
She says, "Through my sad eyes, I read blogs and saw strangers on the street and just assumed everyone had a perfect life. When I told that to Alex, he swore to me that everyone, without exception, had their own true story, their own struggles, their own flaws, worries, concerns; everyone is human. And then he said, 'Look at your own blog, after all. People would have no idea that you’re going through this. You come off like you’re handling everything effortlessly.' That was true, I realized. "
We are tirelessly cultivating the best versions of ourselves to broadcast on the Internet. But what happens when we look to the Internet for guidance, advice, or information? All we find are perfect, smug illusions of real people.
There is a great article on Design*Sponge's Biz Ladies written by Becka Robinson, How to Escape the Comparison Trap. She lists five ways to stop the madness. I've already started some of her suggestions. In five separate posts I'll document my success and failure in implementing them.
In the meantime here are two great articles on our mental well being and the Internet.
Forbes: Is Social Media Destroying Your Self-Esteem?
Newsweek: Is the Web Driving Us Mad?
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