Social media can be a true minefield for self conscious pre pubescents, but with a little help and the right angles, you can avoid being teased by meanies. Well, this fear of scrutiny may be part of the problem.

According to Social Media Today, more than one billion people log on to Instagram every month, where users spend an average of 53 minutes per day scrolling and liking sweet pics of their friends. 

Many young boys and girls are haunted by facts like these, feeling pressured to make their profiles come off as presentable against extreme scrutiny. Kids feel like every post they create must uphold every little aspect of the person that they desire to be. This pressure tends to sculpt a person’s profile into a cookie cutter model that is consistent with almost everyone on the platform. This model has become stronger and stronger with time, and today, the true personality of the person behind the screen is masked by a thick cloud of normality.

The goal of social media is no longer self expression; it is camouflage for oddities. The people you meet online probably will not really like you as a person, because you are not anything like your virtual representation.

I advise you to take these facts from another perspective. According to the same Social Media Today article, 95 million posts are shared on instagram daily. No one will remember your post when it appears identical to 94,999,999 other posts on the website. The post that will be remembered is the one that shows truth: an actual and meaningful representation of the individualism of the artist behind the screen.

In an interview with local fashionista and popular culture aficionado, Alex Braga, he said “Scrolling through my insta feed has grown to feel as mundane as eating Lucky Charms cereal without any marshmallows in it. I just wish the hands of virtual pressure hadn’t molded the online image of the young into one big hoard of normies. Where are the marshmallows?”

I don’t know, Alex, but I do wish people would wake up from their coma of personality unification and become themselves again. 

So my advice for you is to rid yourself of the pressure to be normal on social media and take on the responsibility of being yourself. Don’t let the internet become your shepherd.