These days, there have been many articles suggesting that we have a social media break. Or even further: delete our social media accounts altogether.

My personal opinion about social media has been the same since 2008: it’s like a sharp knife. Just because it’s a sharp knife doesn’t mean it’s dangerous. Depending on how we hold and use it, a sharp knife can be extremely useful. 

Just because a sharp knife cut you once or twice in the past doesn’t mean you’re ‘clever’ for throwing it away. The same with social media. Closing or deleting your social media altogether doesn’t make you any smarter than those who are using social media. You simply fail to see its values.

The Effects of Having Social Media When You Have No Self-Confidence

Many of us were raised by parents who are obsessed with having obedient children. Consequently, with this type of parenting, many children would often have difficulties deciding on their own as they were trained and forced to always listen to their parents. They may later grow into an adult who has no or little self-confidence, always looking for guidance and can’t think for themselves.

Social media makes it easier for us to look at other people’s lives. By looking at other people’s lives, those with no or little self-confidence hope that other people can be some sort of guidance so they don’t have to do the hard work: “thinking for themselves”. 

If they’re following the truly inspiring ones instead of the show-off ones, they may grow into a better version of themselves. Which is great.

But if they’re following the show-off ones for “guidance”, believing wholeheartedly that those are what should happen in everyone’s life to be ‘successful’, they may end up feeling bad about themselves, resulting in even lower self-confidence.

This is, of course, bad for their emotional wellbeing. Having bad emotional wellbeing negatively affects physical wellbeing. With everything being bad, what’s the point of living, really. No, I’m not suggesting suicide though I’m not against it.  I’m suggesting that we all improve our situation and try our best to look after our emotional and physical wellbeing.

Some people just take a shortcut: deleting the social media accounts altogether, claiming proudly that their life is much better without social media. Many of these people, I’d guess, are those mentioned above, the ones that have low self-confidence and are badly affected by inevitably comparing their lives to other people’s lives and believe that other people’s lives are better than theirs. So to them, it’s better to have no social media accounts at all.

How to Stop Comparing

In the past, I often felt inadequate in many things. I would compare myself to others and get easily intimidated by their material success.

These days, after experiencing numerous episodes of depression and anxiety, and found my way to discovering my life’s purpose, I no longer get intimidated by material success. Not that I’m not aiming for material success, I still am, but it’s no longer the number one priority. 

My number one priority is doing whatever it takes to be aligned with my life’s purpose. To those of you who are still wondering what your life’s purpose is, here are some questions to ask to help you discover your life’s purpose.

Therefore, instead of mindlessly scrolling and silently comparing your inadequacy to someone else’s strength, why not go deep into your inventory. By inventory, I mean the passions and talents you have.

Don’t underestimate your uniqueness but also be aware that you’re not the only snowflake on this planet. We are all snowflakes. We are all unique in our own way and we should use our uniqueness to contribute to the world. 

As mentioned here in my post, each of us has a unique life’s purpose. While our life’s purpose may evolve or change in a completely different direction over time, when we believe that each of us has a unique life’s purpose, the urge to compare ourselves to other people, especially in material success, naturally fades. 

Using Social Media to Help Us Stop Feeling Inadequate: The Good and the Evil Ways

I offer both good and evil ways to help us stop feeling inadequate. Why not just the good ways? Because the evil way still exists in many cultures, especially how most parents educate their children. And it’s somehow still effective. Temporarily.

Let’s start with the evil ones first. 

The Evil Way

I label it evil because it has an evil characteristic: feeling good after knowing that others don’t have what we have. So the evil way to help us stop feeling inadequate is simply comparing ourselves to those whom we think have worse situations than ours.

It’s not the ideal way, but it’s what most parents teach their children when their children complain about something they don’t like. And it works on most children. However, certain children, especially those who were born with highly empathetic brains will feel uncomfortable (instead of grateful) after knowing they have what others don’t have.

Typical sentences are: 

“You should be grateful you still have food on the table! Look at the homeless people! They don’t have food! They don’t have a table! And they don’t even have a place to sleep!!”

“You think your parents are too strict? Look at those who don’t even have parents!! You should be grateful you still have parents who care about you!”

Comparing and Comparing

This means the evil way to use social media to help us stop feeling inadequate is to spend time scrutinising our ‘weak’ friends’ accounts just to see what they don’t have and feel good about it as we have what they don’t have.

For example, if you’re a mother with healthy-happy kids, you can spend time looking at your friends who have no social life and have no kids complaining about how lonely their lives are without kids. And if you have no kids, you can spend time looking at your friends who no longer have money to splurge, time to pursue their dreams or spontaneous trips all because of their kids.

The problem is if one day we see that even though they don’t have what we have, and we may suspect that they have one thing we may not have, e.g. happiness, we’re likely to go back to square one: feeling inadequate as we tend to feel that they’re happier than us.

Therefore, the ideal way to see someone else’s inadequacy is not to compare, but to be compassionate towards them and try to help them feel better when possible. 

Perhaps the ideal way is to also be inspired to improve their lives altogether, for real, not for just five seconds. Or go all the way to the commercial side: have a business that solves their problems. You can be compassionate and also making money. Why not. Money is not evil. Money is a tool. A very powerful tool. You just have to remember that you have an obligation to use it for the progress of something bigger than you. Otherwise, you’ll be enslaved by money and end up hoarding it until it rots your mental and physical wellbeing, literally. I will write a separate post about it. Yes of course you can disagree, I will still write about it and you can argue.

The Good Way

Comparing our life to a better one is not that bad if we use the comparison as a productive benchmark instead of a non-productive thought. A non-productive thought includes resenting why we don’t have what they have. A productive benchmark is something we can use to inspire us instead of making us envious.

For example, I used to get intimidated easily by people who travel a lot. But these days instead of being envious, I’d get inspired and would take notes of the places they visit and what they think about them, including their good and bad experiences. They provide valuable information that can help me get prepared for the trips I’ve been longing for.

The healthy way to stop feeling inadequate is not just to be aware of our urges to compare, but also to focus on what we already have and are already doing to get closer to being aligned with our life’s purpose.

This means using social media by following pages that inspire and motivate us to get closer and stay in alignment with our life’s purpose. 

We should also use our social media account to inspire and motivate people to stay in alignment with their life’s purpose. It doesn’t have to be monotonous. 

We can share some jokes to brighten some people’s day. We can share our journey of aligning ourselves with our life’s purpose, such as our hobbies, personal thoughts, tips, and articles/videos that we find inspiring. 

When sharing, share it sincerely, without expectation. Just because nobody likes your post, doesn’t mean nobody reads it.

Some people, somewhere, may be laughing after reading your jokes and feeling good about themselves after such laughter without having the time to click that ‘like’ button.

Some people, somewhere, may be thinking deeply after reading your article. Perhaps busy plotting an argument that ends up with them thinking even deeper before launching their argument. And completely forgot to click that ‘like’ button. Or simply refuse to let you know that they quietly like you. Strange people exist.

So don’t worry about the likes you don’t receive. The point is to inspire, not to impress.

All in All

Social media is like a sharp knife. It can be useful depending on how we use it. 

To use it effectively, we must first be aware of our own tendency to compare. Comparing can lead to resentment on why we don’t have what people have. But comparing can also be a productive benchmark that inspires us. 

While comparing to those whom we perceive ‘less than us’ can make us feel faux superior, it can instantly make us feel inferior once we see that those who are less than us have something we may not have, e.g. happiness. 

Therefore, we should use social media, both in following and sharing, in a ‘good’ way. This means we use it to inspire and motivate instead of to compare and resent or to compare and feel faux superior.