Life beyond filters.

I was having lunch the other day with some friends at a really nice restaurant. We’d finished our exams and thought it would be nice to celebrate with a meal out. Our food soon arrives at our table. However, instead of commenting to each other about how great it looks and enthusiastically start devouring, we all get our phones out and start snapping away. We all post said almost identical photos onto Instagram, albeit with some with an Earlybird filter and some with Toast.

It seems we can no longer eat out without all of us documenting the event on some form of social media. I’m a BIG lover of social media and would probably get the shakes if I didn't check my outlets each day. However, it does seem to be getting ridiculous. Instead of ‘living in the now’, our generation seem to have a constant urge to let our friends know what we are doing every moment of every day. And I say friends loosely. Take a look through your Facebook friends list and see how many of them you have actually had a face-to-face conversation with in the last month.

Why do we do this? Is it so others think we are living a somewhat fulfilled, social life? Isn’t it all a little false? We only seem to document the positives on social media, suggesting that we all live these perfect lives. We don’t tend to document the days we feel lonely, sad, or miserable.

In some ways I guess it is great. Without us really realising, we have managed to create a diary online over the past five or so years which we can reflect on when we’re in old age. I can scroll through my Facebook at any given moment and witness the embarrassing hair cut of 2008 to the drunken fresher photos from 2011. However, are all the images we upload necessary?  I’d much rather like someone’s graduation photo over someone’s Starbucks drink.  Just remember that there is in fact a whole world beyond your phone and laptop screens that doesn’t need to be ‘liked’ by your 500 Facebook friends. Don’t be doing things and taking photos of them just so your online friends can see that you’re doing more than binge watching Breaking Bad.

Maybe instead of working out which filter would look best on that pizza, just eat the pizza. 

Kat xx