Social Media.
We all use it. It’s how this very blog site and the friendships stemming from it were created. But what do we really know about our friends from what they post on their various social media pages? And if we are comparing ourselves to our peers based purely on their Instagram feed, are we setting ourselves up for a fall?
We upload photos of our day; but it’s not a true account of the whole day, is it? It’s not the real story.
Take this photo, which I posted on my Facebook page. Easter crafts, at the table, all happy and straight out of a Pinterest folder, yeah? No. This was a really nice activity, for all of three minutes. Then the fighting started. They fought over the tissue paper, threw the feathers on the floor in a tantrum because they weren’t ‘swan feathers’ and then said they didn’t want to wear the hats… Excellent. Took me longer to get all the craft accessories out of the cupboard and to tidy up then it did for them to actually sit to make anything.
I posted this to my Instagram account. A nice Pizza Hut lunch during Half Term. Just the three of us. Yes, it was lovely… Til Big Bear needed the toilet and I had to drag Baby Bear away from his pizza in order to accompany the big one. This resulted in a screaming fit, which all the other parents witnessed, and one frazzled Mama Bear.
I uploaded this photo to my Facebook account a couple of weeks ago, after Baby Bear and I went for a walk/scoot. It looks lovely, and we did have a lovely time. But what you can’t see from this image was the almighty fight I had to get him into his car seat to get to the park in the first place, the brawl he had with his brother first thing in the morning, the amount of times I’d shouted “stop it” to them both before Big Bear had gone to pre-school, the two other ‘selfies’ which were discarded due to closed eyes, or the duck who was terrorised by him before I frog-marched him back to the car for Round 2 of ‘car seat wrestling’.
I’m not lying or exaggerating when I post these photos onto Facebook or Instagram, these moments happened. They are just that, though: moments. A photo captures one moment in time, it is not a true representation of someone’s entire day. It’s all too easy to believe that people who post on Social Media have these perfect, harmonious lives where everything is glorious and they’re forever at the farm or the theatre. But that’s not real.
Most people don’t post when something mundane or ordinary happens. They don’t ‘check-in’ when they are going to Tescos or let the world of Instagram know if they’ve had fish fingers, chips and beans for tea. They don’t upload photos of their messy kitchens after that meal, they only upload a photo of their kid appearing to wolf down a homemade pie with eight different types of homegrown veg.
Appearances can be deceiving. Don’t compare yourselves to other mums via the wonders of FB or IG, and certainly don’t try and compete with the Pinterest mum! Just know that what you see on their social media pages is only a very brief glimpse into their world, and we are all human. There’s always a truth behind the photo you see.
Even the mum who takes both kids swimming every week and cooks from scratch every day has a playroom which is so untidy she just shuts the door on it each night. But she would never upload of photo of it to FB….
Sleep Decoration 