#YouToo and The Implicit Promises of Social Media
In the world we currently live in, explaining the depth of social media’s role in our lives is nearly impossible. Equally as difficult to pin down is the ways in which it has changed how we relate to the world around us, other people, and even ourselves. These platforms, along with the economic opportunities they provide and the information they are able to share instantaneously across the globe, give the everyday individual the unique opportunity of expressing themselves in limitless ways. While for many, the outlet of sharing and connecting with others has been a great way of keeping in touch with old friends and up to date on news and pop-culture, the interactions others such as the Millennial and Gen Z demographics are having aren’t quite so helpful.
Where our parents had Keeping Up With The Joneses we now have Keeping Up With The Kardashians. And while many idly call them and their show obnoxious, there’s a reason they are a family of billionaires, moguls, icons, and are each followed by millions online. Their success comes from the fact that everyone is craving a reality that’s about as real as the one portrayed on their reality t.v. show. With a crew on hand, publicists, stylists, do-overs, and editing life looks picture perfect even at its worst. And for them it’s fine because this is meant to be entertainment. It is material for consumption. But the everyday life of the common individual isn’t. And that is where social media is breaking society down and rebuilding it in the image of the unattainable perfection seen projected online.
Having erupted onto the music scene in early 2021, Olivia Rodrigo perfectly encapsulates the struggles young people face when they find themselves thinking about social media long after their phones have been put away. On the track Jealousy, Jealousy off her debut album Sour she sings:
And I see everyone gettin’ all the things I want
And I’m happy for them, but then again, I’m not
Just cool vintage clothes and vacation photos
I can’t stand it, oh, God, I sound crazy
Their win is not my loss
I know it’s true
But I can’t help gettin’ caught up in it all
Co-comparison is killin’ me slowly
These words reflect the experiences and emotions of an entire generation, who having grown up inundated by the social media lifestyles of influencers, celebrities, and It-Girls around the world, compare their regular young lives to people who are paid to perform the idea of perfection on these sites. Not only is it finding out about a high school party you were the only person not invited to thanks to Snapchat and Instagram stories, but it’s counting the likes one person got on their photo versus the much lower number of likes you got. It’s feeling envious of the wealthy who go on expensive vacations and thus have profiles that make it appear as though they live in the Bahamas year round with their 20 closest friends wearing designer clothes. It’s seeing the kind of people who get attention and positive reinforcement for their online behavior knowing that it could never be you because of your height, weight, athleticism, beauty, race, and more. It’s no secret that the algorithms prioritize certain kinds of content — that certain trends get more views, likes, adoration, and affirmation from the general public. But most people don’t belong to that golden group of individuals that we can sarcastically refer to as “God’s Favorites.” Social Media platforms have the ability to portray these lifestyles as the norm, to position these narratives as those of “all people of this age” or “all girls” and “all guys”. But we know that all life experiences, opportunities, setbacks, and styles aren’t universal.
This is how social media sucks us in. It shows us a dream version of life and makes us feel like we are failing if it’s not the life we are living. Furthering the problem is the implied promise of #YouToo can achieve this, or look like this, or travel here, or have these friends, or find the perfect spouse and have a beautiful family in the perfect home wherever your heart desires. It ignores the barriers to entry that many people face like economic opportunity, location, time, education, and much much more. It makes life look like it works at the touch of a button since it’s through merely posting a photo that these things become reality in the eyes of others. Even though we all seem to accept that social media is merely a projection of our best selves, it’s impossible to not eventually be worn down by the feeling that you just aren’t enough. It’s so easy fall down the rabbit whole of hating that you aren’t where your peers are, haven’t achieved as much as your colleagues have, are still single, or will just never look like one of the Hadid sisters.
And once these platforms have our complete attention, our better judgement out the window, and our self-confidence on the floor, they use their algorithms to bring all the consumeristic goods and lifestyle tricks that will cure us of our failures right to our timelines. Whether it’s a diet supplement that’s going to make you lose 20 pounds in a few weeks, or a workout that will give you a superhero body, all it takes is you buying this, that ,or the other and you too can be like “them” — those who are beating you at life.
A hugely popular series amongst young women is released on the Youtube page for Vogue Magazine pretty regularly. In these segments, popular
celebrities go through their skin care and beauty routines showing the products they use, the instruments they deem vital, and the regimens that keep them looking beautiful at all times. Never mind the fact they all get luxury facials regularly and are filming these videos in luxury hotel bathrooms with studio lighting. But those things don’t matter because they have finally told us what they do to look like them and how we can do it too. Now, thanks to the handy links in the description below the video, viewers can go directly to the websites that sell these products and solve their problems at the touch of a button colloquially known as “Add To Cart”. No longer is there a need to compare when we’re all the same now. As if it were really that simple.
What this leads to is an endless cycle of tearing people down through comparison and then handing out golden tickets that say “well this is how we can fix you!” And in the end, it rarely works out to be true. More often than not people just end up using apps and software to completely change their appearance to be more “Instragrammable”. And for those who have tried the diets, exercise bootcamps, green juices and lemon water, spent thousands of dollars on cosmetics, and more on clothes that aren’t even their style, comes the realization that they will never be that person everybody idolizes because they can only ever be themselves. It never really mattered that they could make themselves take up less space while still being larger than life — the person everyone wants to be around but is never in the way. Because at the end of the day, it all comes down to believability and whether or not you can maintain these totally unrealistic standards. You change yourself, you post about it, and then you realize that in order to be the type of person you wanted to be, you had to erase the best things about yourself; the part of you that could have been happy, authentic, real, relatable enough to actually make friends with, the person who could have been self-assured and confident. When we let social media dictate what the world should look like, it’s moves in the direction of a world filled with models in bikinis on boats. And hey, that sounds like a fun time; but we once again circle back to the fact that it’s not realistic for 99.9% of the world’s population and maybe not even how many would choose to spend their time given the opportunity. We need to stop measuring the success of our own lives against fairytales; because, that’s what Instagram has become — a beautiful, curated, narrative with a happy ending in every photo. Instead of looking at these platforms as #YouToo should look like this or #YouToo could be here if you worked harder, looked better, or deserved more, I think it’s time to think in terms of #YouToo deserve to tell your true authentic story, and live in your own skin without feeling pressure to change.
