Does Lucky in Love Really Exist?

by Amina Moustapha

LIFE BEFORE SOCIAL MEDIA

It’s very hard to try and imagine a life ‘before’ social media, as it’s such a huge part of our lives today. Looking back, it seems as though we were living in the neolithic era, as Stone age farmers who shared everything by word of mouth. There was no fast, live-streamed news like there is today and you certainly couldn’t have watched the sights of the Notre-Dame burning live in Paris through social media outlets.

Friends and Relationships

In many ways we were living much smaller scale lives. Our ‘friends’ were physical people we knew around us, not profiles we accepted or rejected and most of us met our romantic partners in real life unplanned situations. There was no way to check if people were ‘single’ or ‘in a relationship’ on Facebook, a guy or a girl would simply go up to someone they were interested in and start a conversation. Body Image

Back then we compared ourselves to the nearest and dearest we chose to have around us, not the entire world. There was less pressure to be ‘picture perfect’ so to speak, and we had only one face, our real one – not an online virtual persona and physical manifestation.

Free-spirited Lifestyle Global Movements and Trolls

This was a beautiful time of love letters and door knocking. Children could really be ‘children’. The third-generation often reminisce their childhood and the days spent outside building dens and being in the open. The youth of today are instead stuck behind a computer screen, making posts on social media to say what game they will be live on and when.

We lived entirely in the moment and took photos to share with close friends and family, not to achieve ‘likes’ on social media. It was an incredible golden- age when we did things simply because we wanted to, not because sharing things would make others think a certain way about us.

Privacy

Crucially, we lived much more private lives back then. A graduate never feared that an employer might bring up a poorly-judged tweet they made 8 years ago, and jokes were kept within small circles of friends. This was the time when nothing ever went viral, and missing dogs were searched for by walking the streets and putting up posters – not by sharing a missing post on Facebook.

LIFE AFTER SOCIAL MEDIA

While our memories of a life ‘before’ social media seem somewhat nostalgic and idealistic, there are so many positives in the ways our lives have changed since.

Knowing Everything About Everyone

Platforms like Facebook have been really amazing in helping us to keep in contact with friends and families across long distances. In a slightly creepy way, we are now able to lurk in the background of people’s lives. We can see photos and videos from a childhood friend’s wedding day, despite not talking to that ‘friend’ for 10 years, and are able to know everything about the details of other people’s lives. We now get tagged in photos, memes and videos constantly – it’s like your friends are with you wherever you go, always checking in. You can be at the supermarket buying your dinner and yet know exactly where everyone else is through functions like the Snapchat map, which was slightly problematic in its tracking abilities.

Like most things, the social media revolution has both its upsides and downsides. Connecting everyone across the world on a joint platform is able to unite people from small communities and subcultures, and push global movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. At the same time, it can be so frustrating to have to deal with everyone’s opinions all the time. Trolls are now commonplace, and in large numbers they can push annoying or upsetting viewpoints that do nothing but alienate people and question their self-confidence.

The Cracks Begging to Show

The binary between a life ‘before’ and ‘after’ social media is not very clear cut though. In recent years, if you look close enough, you can spot the beginning of a turn away from the social media lifestyle.

When Kylie Jenner tweeted that she never uses Snapchat anymore and called it ‘sad’, the company’s shares dropped by 8%. This highlights just how fragile social media platforms are, and how they can be easily dropped for the next new thing.

In the music world some artists have also begun to reject the use of phones at their concerts - even Beyoncé has called out audience members before. Some artists have taken it a step further, banning all phones and thus social media at their events by using the new yondr pouch, which guests seal their phones in for the night. At one concert in the UK, grime artist Skepta declared that for one night only, the audience are not their instagram or twitter name. He shouted, ‘you’re yourself, right here, together with everybody, now.’

If we’ve learned anything from the past, it’s that we need to remain firmly in the present. Appreciate our friends (the real ones) and live life without the anxiety of a certain social media image. Doing this can bring together the good parts of both life ‘before’ and ‘after’ social media.