Hypertext assignment

     Social Media, one of the most influential creations of humanity. It’s supposed to be this marvelous creation that helps connect the world together, allowing people from all corners to communicate with one another. However, in recent times, the various issues of having an online platform where one can talk to virtually anyone while remaining anonymous has arisen, and besides the usage of social media, one would also hear a lot about the negative effects of using it. In this assignment I will focus on one of the negative aspects of it based on personal experience as well as based on some research, being how social media is bad for the competitive and envious nature of human beings.

` To go over social media; Social medias are platforms where people can post about almost anything and everything they want, restricted only by the guidelines of the platform. Stuff from educational content to posting about their own lives, people can choose how and where to push what is often called “content” online. One of the important things to know when I talk about when being online and how people compare themselves to others in such, is that people can choose to post stuff anonymously, and can choose to lie about their own circumstances for “clout”, and it’s hard to verify if what they talked about is true or not, leading to people living false lives for other people to see.

Now to give some background about myself, and why this has been something I’ve experienced a lot of, I come from a very typical asian family; And it is true to a certain extent that a lot of asian parents like to use their children as points of comparison to other parents and their children. Growing up I’ve often been compared to most of my friends and classmates in terms of a lot of different factors, such as grades, ability to perform in sports and various extracurricular activities. A lot of people may think this is mere stereotyping but as me and my friends have experienced it first hand, we can say that most of what is said about this stereotype is true. This article briefly goes over this side of asian parenting, and with how given information it can be said that being compared to others or comparing myself to others is one big part of my life growing up, and should be kept in mind as I go on to explain how social media plays a role in this.

Social Media turns up this “social comparison” to a whole new level, now in a state where they’re able to see people’s best moments, be it true or not, during their worst moments, as explained in this article here; We start thinking about how we should be doing better or how we should be at the level of success certain people show online when in fact the success stories shown on social media are mostly one in a few hundred, and what is not seen by most people would be the hours of time and effort that people put into achieving the success they show; That or the 5 to 10 minutes they spent cultivating a lie to just feel good about themselves. You can imagine how it feels to be at the bottom or just feeling down about something, opening social media and seeing posts like “This kid became a CEO at age 10” or “How I turned my life around and earned a million dollars” can be disheartening to people who read it, of course those 2 examples are over glorifications of what actual “success” posts looks like but seeing a large quantity of success posts can really lower our own self-esteem. I was a victim of this, as someone who grew up in the age where social media was evolving, I used it since a moderately young age and started feeling the effects of this, looking at myself and thinking “why couldn’t I be like them” to a lot of online personalities, which ended up hurting my mental state more than what had already been put on me from my parents and peers. 

Human beings are competitive by nature, which is explained well by this article and its study on how people were happier when they had more income compared to their peers. So it makes sense why naturally people would start to compare themselves to others, because being better feels good. However recent studies have shown that there is another driving force in human nature that rivals competition - cooperation, and I believe this to be how I broke free from comparing myself to those unrealistic goals set upon myself by seeing those posts on social media. By engaging with the people who do well and talking to friends and inspiring them to do better, I myself have been inspired to grow in a more positive manner online; Sure I’m not suddenly breaking world records or earning glorified amounts of money, but by being more friendly and talking more to those who are doing well and being happy because they did, I in return find myself in a more positive headspace. As they say, when someone close to you is doing well, they inspire us to be our best as well; This being the main positive aspect of social comparison. As quoted by the previous article, “We often do better if we’re striving to keep up with a role model or a successful friend, and we can make ourselves better by supporting others.”

This brings me to the closing paragraph of this post. Although this super “clout” based ladder of social media has taken the world, I believe and based on my own experiences that we can use social comparisons for the better, to help improve each other and make ourselves better people. As someone who had to go through a lot of these issues myself, I know first hand that having a good support group, be it in person or online, can go a long way to help create a more positive outlook on life, and on other people.  Sources Used:

Asian parenting stereotypes: The good and the bad. A simple guide to parenting for Asian. (2022, February 22). https://thesimps.com/asian-parenting-stereotypes/

Elizabeth Scott, P. (2023, August 11). The stress of social comparison and how to limit comparing yourself to others. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/the-stress-of-social-comparison-4154076

Hutson, M. (2015, October 10). The thirst for competition. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/why-we-compete/403201/

Prabhakar. (2017, June 19). Is human nature competitive or cooperative? |. |. http://proutglobe.org/2012/10/is-human-nature-competitive-or-cooperative/