Authenticity on Social Media

Recently I saw a photo on Facebook of a sign that said “May your life be as awesome as you pretend it is on Facebook.” This got me thinking a lot about authenticity across all platforms of social media. I use my blog and social media platforms to promote a positive message. With all the negativity going on in the world and online, I think it’s a breath of fresh air to see people positing positive things. I am far from perfect but I’m not one to air my dirty laundry online for all to see and I don’t ever intend to start.

Does this make me inauthentic or fake? Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but from my perspective what you see is what you get. Yes I have bad days and the occasional bad week and it would be easy to post how bad I am feeling about myself and how annoying life can be but I always decide to take the high road and try and turn my negative into a positive learning experience. I feel empowered to post things that I find inspiring and I hope that I can inspire others with what I have to say. I never want to stop the positive direction my social media platforms are going.

It’s easy to fall down that social media rabbit hole. I can sometimes find myself mindlessly scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and then I’ll put my phone down and within two minutes I’ll have my phone back in my hands scrolling again like something must have been posted that I need to see. It’s hard sometimes, when you’re constantly checking your feeds, to stop yourself from comparing your life to others. One thing that I’ve done recently is a sort of spring cleaning of the people I follow. I went through and decided which feeds inspired me and made me feel motivated to live my best life with the content they were posting. The ones that didn’t were unfollowed.

Remember that you are only seeing snippets of someones life online. Just because someone is posting the good things in their life doesn’t make them fake or inauthentic. People decide what they want to share publicly and I admire people who post about what makes them tick and what makes them feel good about themselves.