'Game Face' On All the Time Because Friends Are Watching on Facebook?

Are we wishing for a real life?

A website called Whisper was hugely popular back then — their mantra? You can say anything here, even the things you cannot tell your best friend. Because, as it turns out, the internet has made us "game face" people.

Facebook glamorizes people's lives more than they really are. All the time we see pictures of friends vacationing in an exotic place, or couples taking romantic pictures — in all, trying to show only our best face to friends. If you think about it: is it possible that in the 10-day vacation you took, everything was bliss? Kids would have fought, couples would have disagreed over the choice of restaurant, and at least one day, nothing seemed to work out the way it was planned. But when you post pictures, everything just looks perfect. Whether you are using Photoshop to edit the pictures or just showing the world only the good ones — there is nothing wrong with this; it's just that life is not perfect, and we are showing a false picture.

Social media has made us fake. We are constantly under pressure to look good, to sound good, and to even show a perfect life. No longer are we showing the true picture — or perhaps the truth has even blurred…

Does Facebook actually make us depressed?

We would assume that if all we are seeing is happy pictures and motivational quotes, then life would be happier. In fact, the opposite is true. A study by the University of Michigan (Kross, Verduyn, et al., published in PLOS ONE in August 2013) stated that the more time a person spent on Facebook, the worse their mood was. Feelings of jealousy, loneliness, and of being left out infiltrate when we are constantly seeing the happy lives of others. In reality, nobody's life is perfect — everybody has the same fears, same insecurities; it's just that now we all have our "game face" on all the time.

Facebook causes depression and makes people narcissistic, yet we are not able to control the addiction. Maybe it has now become a part of us to look into the lives of friends and family — but is it really helping? Is there one person out there who could say, "I don't feel jealous at all when I see a friend's kid excelling"? Is there a need for these negative emotions?

Why was Whisper so popular?

The popularity of a website like Whisper — which allowed you to be anonymous so that you could share your real, true thoughts — just proves that while the internet is making the lives of people public, thoughts and feelings have become extremely private. The omnipresent social media in our lives has given us the false illusion of companionship and has limited our discussion and sharing to only the happy things of our lives. Well, we all know that life is not that.

Maybe we need to switch off Facebook and start living a real life.