In a matter of seconds, I can transform any image of myself. I can smooth my skin, sculpt my nose and adjust my color. And I can do it all and more with a simple filter. This kind of power used to be exclusive to photography professionals with expensive software and the time it took to use that software. But now, most of us have this power downloaded onto our phones and can access it with just a few clicks and swipes. Using this ability might just reveal much more about our true selves than we ever intended to show…
Each new generation tends to invent new tools and ways of doing things. But tools also reveal something about ourselves. Humanity may have had some good intentions when we first forged the sword, but we also revealed our bloodlust. When we invented paper, we could finally record our stories and ideas, but we also revealed our ignorance and our capacity to lie on a large scale. Each new tool revealed something about ourselves that we never really meant to show the world.
The same has happened in the computer age. We built computers to simplify our lives and complete tasks in less time. But computers – especially those rectangular ones we call phones – have also revealed a particular obsession that we all seem to have. My phone tells me how many hours I spend looking at it every week. It’s an embarrassing number and I won’t even tell you what it is. But the national average is nearing seven hours per day. That’s nearly an entire workday. This shows us that something on those screens has captured our attention. Our phones are revealing an obsession.
Social media might be the key to understanding what that obsession is. Whatever platform you tend to favor, the fundamentals are the same. You put up content and others react to that content. The goal is always to get people to “like,” “share,” “follow” and “LOL.”
So what does all this mean? I think it’s obvious: We need people to like us. That is our obsession.
Everyone cares deeply and to their core about what other people think. We need people, and we need people to need us. That means we need others to like us.
Take a few moments to scroll through someone’s Instagram page. For example, you’ll see how carefully they have edited their life story. They are careful to only reveal those parts of themselves that they think you will like. They only tell certain stories. They only show certain pictures. And if you and I looked at our own profiles, we’d realize we each do the same thing.
And our pictures might be the most revealing of all. We each learn to pose in ways that maximize our assets and minimize our insecurities. We filter, adjust and edit our photos to erase everything we are trying to hide. We create a sort of fake beauty. But in doing so, we are announcing to the world exactly where our insecurities lie.
Everyone in our lives is hoping everyone else likes them. The stories and pictures we show on social media make this obvious. But what should you do with this revelation? Well, as always, you have two choices. You can say either, “I am first,” or, “I am Second.” In other words, you can exploit people’s insecurities for your own benefit. Or, knowing how desperate everyone is for love, you can choose to love them.
If there was any doubt before, the truth behind these social media “masks” are now revealed. Everyone desires love, approval and acceptance. Now, the question is, will you give it to them? Everyone wants to know if you like them. So will you tell them that you do? Everyone is worried about how they look. Will you tell them that you think God made them beautiful? Everyone is concerned about the story their life is telling. So will you tell them you love them no matter their past, present or future? And will you tell them that God loves them, too?