This past summer my family and I went on our usual long summer road trip. We were able to visit DC, NYC, Boston and New England. After this summer the kids can say that they've set foot in all of the lower 48 states. I had a great time showing the kids around the sites where our nations early history actually happened. I enjoyed sharing pictures on Facebook and Instagram with plenty of positive comments from family and friends commenting on our adventures.
However, those pictures don't show the whole picture. There's no picture of draining the sewage line from the RV. No video of the epic meltdown by my 9 year old. No record of the dozens of fights between brothers. No consideration of the substantial expense of fuel, food, and activities. Yuck!
That's the biggest problem with social media. We only see the highlight reel of people's lives and never the whole reality. The reality is messy and nowhere near as glamorous as our "highlight reel" makes things look.
By itself this isn't a problem but inevitably it leads to us comparing our lives to our friends top ten moments. All media has done this for ages leaving us with unrealistic standards to judge ourselves against. It's such an easy trap to fall into even if you know it's there that most of us can't help ourselves.
We see our friends all living their "perfect" lives and think that somehow we are less than those perfect people on our social media. In reality, they have plenty of fumbles, errors, bad calls, and interceptions that they just didn't share with you.
