Beyond The Glamour: Embracing Authenticity - Mental Health 2/7
As-salam alaykum. I'm Berak Hussain, the Muslim counselor. Has social media fueled our vanity and our ego? I think you know the answer to that. We just have to look at Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook and see how a lot of people are more engaged online as opposed to real life. How does this affect our sense of self or self-esteem? How we interact with others, and our overall well-being? Well, you spend more time online, you forget how to actually speak and interact with people around you, and that becomes a problem with our social interactions, with our relationships, with our family and our friends, and the time that we actually spend with people.
How does this affect our own egos and our vanities? Well, a lot of young people will post pictures of themselves and keep going back to check how many likes and hearts are there. And so that makes them feel good when they see how many people are actually responding to their photos. But really, does that really make you feel good? How many likes you get? Does that really define your self-worth and who you really are and your value as a human being?
Well, unfortunately, When you see a lot of young people, that is the case. The darker side of social media has to do with what is real and what is not real. What you see is not exactly how people are truly living. It is the misperception and the reality of what is really happening. There is this interesting picture of a bride and a groom in their wedded bliss in their clothing, the wedding, they look happy. There is another picture of the same couple where the man is grasping onto her arms with bruises all along it. This is a very interesting picture in the sense that it shows you, what is in front of you is not necessarily what's happening behind the scenes.
And this is also a reflection of what we see in social media, where people think this is how everything should be. This is how they should be living with such happiness, with the cars, with the materialism, with the food, and all the restaurants, and the clothing, and the people, and the adventures, when in fact, it is all fake. And so people connect their self-worth, again, to how they should be living based on things that are not necessarily real, because those same people who are showing this are not happy themselves. They are trying to show something that is not real. It is not really reflecting what is happening in their lives, or rather what they want.
And so people forget that, that what you see in front of you is not necessarily what is really happening out there. And people connect their self-worth, their energy, who they are, and how they should be living based on things that are not real.
And so I always remind people, be genuine. Don't let the glam and the glitter and what you see out there truly impact you, in terms of how you could be living a happy, genuine, and serene life. Don't let the glitz of social media and the misperceptions of that impact you to living the life that you could be living, being genuine through yourself. As-salam alaykum.
