Social Media Pressures

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I love social media, I’ve loved it ever since I get tweets as texts to my flip phone and built up my Myspace profile to 4,000 friends.

I naturally became invested in becoming an Instagram influencer and blogger and I love making content and connecting with people. I work in communications. Social media is basically my life and to some that may be pathetic, but to me it’s what makes me happy.

Reaching people, being creative, and pushing myself for my passion is rewarding to me.

I know some people will say kids these days are attached to their phone, put their whole lives of Facebook, and are lazy and dramatic on the internet. But social media is so much more than that. It’s a connection, it’s an influence, it’s fun.

But social media also comes with a lot of pressure. You used to get judged by your in-person appearance, now you get judged on what you put on Facebook, your follower ratio on Twitter, and how many likes you get on Instagram. It’s all very overwhelming especially if you use social media professionally and personally like I do.

A month or two ago I realized how much it was all really impacting me. I was spending hours on Instagram, combing through hashtags and following people and creating perfect photos. And it started eating at me because I felt like my work wasn’t being rewarded. Social media is work for me and a passion project for me, but I recently lost all of the fun and the passion.

I would get visibly upset when I didn’t get any good photos from an event I went to, even if I enjoyed the event it would get overshadowed by lack of likes, the retweets, the comments.

I had to put my life back into perspective. My whole goal with my Instagram in the first place was to influence others to live their best lives, that they don’t have to be perfect but they can still have fun. I wanted others to follow me so I could inspire them. I wanted the likes and comments so I could reach more people. But I lost all of that to number goals and getting wrapped up in not being as good as everyone else.

Other bloggers have fancy cameras, perfectly coordinated shots, and tons of engagement. I don’t have that and it used to be okay because I wasn’t trying to be perfect. But it’s hard not to want to be what those bloggers are, to not compare yourself to their smiles and their lives.

My goal was and is now again to show people that you can live your happiest life, you can travel and enjoy what you do even when you feel restricted. I want to inspire others and I can’t do that if I’m not inspiring myself first and shrugging off the social media pressure.

48 thoughts on “Social Media Pressures”

  1. I am on social media because I’m a bit of an introvert who likes making connections with people as a hobby. It also helps me to chronicle and curate things I’m interested in. It works for me, not the other way around. Give yourself a break and just enjoy it.

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  5. Social media for any blogger is like having a second job. Each time you write a post, that is barely half the work. Now granted, I’m in the food space, but one of the things I can now look back on and say I regret not doing this sooner was investing in a good camera. I have a bottom of the market DSLR, but it takes way better pictures than my Galaxy 7 ever will. Let’s face it, photos are how people see you and the information you put out there. Certain things you have to look at as an investment into yourself. If we can all justify the cost of college, then why not justify at least a basic camera? The cheapest one on the market is about the same price as one college credit. The biggest things I learned in a year of blogging are this: you’ll overestimate how much you can get done in a day while underestimating how much you can get done in a year. Once in a while take a step back. I actually now keep a separate file offline of how many followers, page views, and other ridiculous stats to remind me of how far I’ve come so on those days where I’m not seeing instant results I can step back and enjoy the journey and be proud of what I’ve built so far.

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    1. That’s a great tactic! I often compare myself to other bloggers even when they have a completely different audience/niche than I do. But it is like a second job and becomes just as pressuring and overwhelming!

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    2. I just read your comment and agree that it’s worth investing in equipment to take good pictures since that’s how we present ourselves to the world. Do you have advice on buying a camera? I am in the market for a DSLR that takes good video as well so if you have a post with your recommendation, can you link it for me? thanks.

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      1. Hey Karen! I don’t want to outright recommend a camera. I’ve only owned 1 DSLR and have absolutely nothing to compare it against. I love my camera and think it’s great, but I think every blogger has different needs. I’m happy to tell you what I have and why I chose it. I purchased a canon eos rebel SL1 and a 50mm lens. I chose this because it was in my budget ($500 and under) and the lens was another $100. I purchased it on amazon because their prices were the best. I also chose it for a very personal reason too, my hands are really small. It was the lightest and most compact. It also has a touch screen which helps for getting certain parts of the photo into focus. It just felt like a good match. I would recommend a few things for your next steps. I would email your favorite bloggers and find out what camera and lenses they are using or the ones they started with. I did that. Most of the bigger bloggers had a starter camera and worked their way up to the cameras that cost more than a mortgage payment. If you are in NYC, make a trip to B&H or some other reputable camera store. Tell them the types of shots are you looking to capture and they should recommend something that will fit into the type of photography you are looking to do. Go in there with no intention to buy anything (and be sure to do a price check), play with every single camera and find the best balance of feel and budget. See how they feel in your hand. Take a few pictures with them. Most cameras (even camera phones) will shoot in 1080 for video. There may be some other hidden expenses in there too like tripods, lenses, memory cards, and post production software like Adobe. Anyways, I know we aren’t blogging about the same topics, but there maybe some advice on here you can use. Lots of bloggers post blogger resource guides (for two reasons: to make money and to help others). Read those take them with a grain of salt and see what you can learn from others. Here is my blogger resource page, it’s long but has some resources I think you can still use: https://www.becomebetty.com/blogger-resources/start-a-food-blog-from-budgets-of-zero-to-one-thousand-dollars/ I hope this helps!

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  6. I feel you. I was just at an event and experiencing something really fun and in the back of my mind, I was regretting that I wasn’t getting a good video recording of it for my YouTube channel. Social media pressure is real but as long as you don’t allow it to rob you really experiencing life, you’re fine.

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  8. I get why this kind of thing drives you it’s not silly. It’s great that you’ve noticed it eating at you and you’ve done something about it. I hope you rediscover your drive and happiness 🙂

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  9. I feel you. I try to take better pictures, make a theme, post photos people would like, keep liking other people pictures and commenting. All these make me tired since I don’t enjoy what I am doing. I really think I should shut down some social media I don’t like to use.
    Do you think I should still keep those accounts to just post “new post is up” kind of thing?

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    1. They say it’s good to keep them because what if the one you use the most (for me it’s Instagram) became less popular, what would you fall back on? I think it’s fair to put less energy into some of them though and just try to evaluate what you do enjoy!

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  24. Thanks for sharing (I know this is an old post). I have a love-hate relationship with social media, but more importantly, I’m old, I came of age before social media, so it’s good to hear this from your perspective.

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  26. It’s too easy spending hours consuming content rather than creating. I think it’s okay as long as we are creating content 80% of the time and consuming 20% of the time, but seriously, who actually does that? Social media is purposely designed for us to consume, consume, consume! It’s also human nature for us to want to compare ourselves to others.

    Rather than try to set boundaries for myself, I had to cut the cord and go cold turkey. This was extremely difficult for me considering that I used to be a huge content consumer and was addicted to social media for 10 years. Social media was mainly how I socialized with people, so I had to learn how to live without that. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be and now I can’t see myself returning to social media platforms any time soon. It’s been 3+ years.

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      1. Tbh when I was still using social media, I was not in a good place and I fell into a deep depression. I had also failed a semester at school in 2019 and didn’t want to have to explain myself to people. That was my main motivation to quit Instagram and focus on what needed to be done. I quit FB in 2017 after my daughter was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition and I was sick and tired of all of the ignorant comments that I kept receiving on social media.

        I felt so miserable comparing myself to others and yet, I couldn’t help it when I was on social media. I really think that social media is designed to make us feel badly about ourselves, and I often wonder if famous influencers are unhappy too 🤔

        I totally support you in wanting to make a career change, especially if you are unhappy with your current career or feel like you need more anonymity in your life to advance your career. Best of luck! 🤗😇

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  27. You’re so right. Social media can be a great thing, depending on how you use it. I created a new Instagram to go with my blog and I only follow people I admire or people that make me laugh, people that are passionate about things like I am. A couple years ago I felt like social media had been weaponised against me and I could never compare to what everyone else was doing or looking like.

    Now, I post if and when I want, about what I want. I use it to talk about my mental health and invisible illness because hiding it hadn’t done me any favours and maybe someone else that was struggling would see it and not feel so alone. You are right that the numbers game still creeps in sometimes but as long as we recognise that, take a step back and make sure we are respecting our own boundaries I think it can be a wonderful thing.

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  28. I see social media as a tool, we can use it to suit what we want to get from it – alternatively we can surrender to it and abide by it’s pressures. Maybe that’s easier to say if you’re not trying to make a living from it. I guess like anything – e.g. a job, if it’s causing stress and anxiety – maybe it’s time to re-evaluate 🤗✨

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