"Stop Instagramming Your Perfect Life" - Opinion

Writer Shauna Niequist has recently posted the article, "Stop Instagramming Your Perfect Life". I would like to give my reaction to her post. As I only have an account on Facebook, my opinion will be based on my experience on Facebook.

To sum up, Shauna Niequist thinks it's not good to post too many photos of good time of your life on the social networks.

First, Shauna Niequist says when you post something on the web, you sort these things. That means you will never post a horrible photo of yours but preferably the one you look the most wonderful. Therefore, you only want to show the nicest time of your life and that makes your life fake as everyone knows your life is not only happiness. So, you build another you on the web, a you who always lives in the happiness.

But of course, who likes posting weird photos of them on the web? Who wants to say to the whole world: "hello, I'm ugly!"? People who only post nice things of them may look pretentious to you, but they actually want to give confidence to themselves. Posting good things of them enable them to remember nice times when they're sad in the future.

Secondly, Shauna Niequiest says we only check the social networks when we're bored. Lots of friends of mine send pictures they've just taken during their dinner or while they're still walking with their kids, immediately via Instagram. Of course, they don't check other contacts' profile at this instant. I may be online and check my friends' profile at this instant. However, that doesn't mean I only go on Facebook when I'm bored!

Nowadays, the social networks become a tool of communication. The community we're living in is a community of sharing. You post something on Facebook when you want to share it but you don't know with who you want to share with. So, you just post it. Then, someone will react to your post and a nice conversation may start. Indeed, you may not think of this person but who knows, they can have similar interests to yours that you didn't know beforehand. Posting a picture of you standing near the Eiffel tower may lead to reactions of lovers of French history, and you can both learn things from each other.

According to Shauna Niequist, when you post nice things of you, others may feel sad of themselves. It's like just showing up your perfect life and make people compare their lives between one another.

That can be true. When I see pictures of my friends graduating from college, wearing the academic dress and handling proudly their diploma, I'm sad because in France, we don't have such a ceremony. Of course, I envy them and I wish I had worn such clothes and got these so nice pictures.

However, more than thinking of myself and complaining of my sad fate, I am happy for my friends. It's not their fault if I didn't have my ceremony, it's the fault of the French education system. So, I'm still happy for my friends and I'm happy they allow me to share their happiness and be happy for them.

About comparing, you don't need to think of it when you're friend with someone. If you start to compare your life with your friend's or vice versa, I think you can seriously think of your friendship. Two friends always have different peaks of happiness. Two friends can share their happiness without thinking that can hurt the other one. Two friends aren't jealous of the other one's happiness.

Finally, of course, if you're not interested in one of your Facebook friends' life, you can just "unfriend" them or change the settings of the updates ("All updates", "Most updates", "Only important"). You control yourself what you want to see! And there are a lot of options to hide what you don't want to see. So, instead of hurting yourself, just close Facebook and live your own happy life.

But I agree with Shauna Niequist when she says we should use the social network to connect with one another. At least, a good point from her post!