Scrolling through Pinterest is a pastime for many people. Kitchens, home decor, art, clothes, etc. Pinterest is considered a place for inspiration, but how good can that inspiration be if all that’s displayed is impalpable perfection. 

The answer is not great. Platforms like Pinterest and Tik Tok create unrealistic standards for what we could achieve. We want what we can’t have and we want it delivered NOW off of Amazon in one day free shipping. The flurry of pictures that we are met with constantly lowers our confidence over time. We feel bad because we can’t have the things that are shown to us, or we can’t get them to be as perfect as the images and videos on our for you and explore pages. This constant beratement of our senses leads us to feel worse than ever about ourselves. 

We forget that those images are altered, they are not reality in any shape or form. We feel inadequacy in our daily lives because of our failure to “be as good”. This feeling leads to anxiety, depression, loneliness, and despair. 

The easy fix we are constantly given is, “don’t compare yourself!” 

“Remember that all social media is fake”

“You are worthy”

All these quotes seem helpful until you realize you’ve been scrolling through Tiktok for three hours sinking into a hole realizing the inevitability of  your life. The comparison that we make is an inevitable process of being human. This process sucks though, like truly, deeply sucks. It feels like we have to accept and compare the inadequacy that we risk feeling anytime we go on social media. It feels like there is nothing we can do. However, there is something we can do.

We can look at our own lives and find the small moments of beauty in them. We can seek out the good things in our own personal lives and choose to see them. It can be difficult at first to see the beauty that we face everyday but it gets easier as time goes on. I suggest taking pictures of things you find beautiful and writing down at least five things that made you happy for the day. 

The bitter comparison that is a part of human nature is difficult to get over, and there is truly no solution that can be absolutely perfect. Reminding each other and ourselves of what beauty the world holds and being aware of the imperfectness that we all have is one step into making social media not have complete control over our lives.