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7 p.m. March

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COLLEGIAN COLUMNISTS

Social media is just posting for people who hate you

By Dillon Gross

@dillongross Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.

Social media sites used to be, and still are, platforms for sharing media with people you know. We’ve all heard social media can be toxic, but we use it anyway. We try to make the most out of a problematic app because it is supposedly fun, and our brains are conditioned to it at this point.

It is second nature to check social media when there’s a lull in the day. We already know it’s addictive, but what about what we’re actually posting on social media?

There’s been a recent trend to make Instagram more casual, meaning that rather than posting staged, highly edited photos, young adults are opting to make their posts less manicured and more authentic. This means posts are more along the lines of photo dumps, in which people will post a series of pictures they simply like.

This might seem like a turn in the right direction, but it’s actually far from it. Having a casual Instagram is seemingly more authentic, and in some cases it genuinely could be, but more often than not, it is just as performative as the typical Instagram feed.

It still involves handpicking the pictures you want others to see, trying to see if they work well together, finding out if the main picture looks good on your feed, possibly editing the one supposedly casual selfie that gets included and finding the perfect, witty-but-nottoo-thoughtful caption.

Instagram is still a performance. Having a casual Instagram doesn’t mean you don’t care, it means you care about wanting to seem like you don’t care. Most of the time, it is just feigned disinterest.

Additionally, many teenagers and young adults fall into the trap of having to create content. Creating content means we’re not posting just to share but to entertain the people who are seeing it.

This is due to the large number of content creators we see on Instagram, TikTok and elsewhere. We have become so accustomed to consuming content that we want to create it. We want our content to be as valuable to others as other people’s content is to us.

But in fact, this isn’t really true. Most of the people we follow on Instagram are followed because we know them from somewhere and want to keep tabs on their life. Maybe we follow a content creator every once in a while and expect content from them, but we don’t expect content from a coworker’s private Instagram account.

One thing that’s important to consider about social media posting is that it’s often to an audience of zero people. There’s no one to perform in front of — there’s no captive audience. Everyone is too wrapped up in their own posts to care about what anyone else is doing.

Even if there is an audience, that audience is often actively rooting against you. Each comment is someone else trying to be funnier than the post is, and that’s only if you’re lucky.

If you’re not conventionally attractive or the audience finds your video cringe in any capacity, it’s likely you’ll find an influx of both passiveaggressive and full-on hate comments.

There are people watching your video who actively don’t like you and set out to make sure you know that. Yet we continue to make and post content.

It’s a vicious cycle of feeling like you should post because you haven’t made content in a while to then feeling bad because the audience either doesn’t exist or is mean to then taking a break from making content. There’s no end to this vicious cycle and no apparent answer either. Social media is so new that there’s no way to tell how it will evolve.

For the time being, I believe everyone should focus on what makes them happy. If you want to spend hours editing your photos, do it. If all you want to do is post pictures of your dog, go for it. Life’s too short to care about what other people think of you on an ultimately irrelevant social media site.

It’s hard not to fall into the trap of creating content, but not everything needs to be valuable to others to have value. If you like it, that’s enough. Friends who care about you will care about it. There’s also a certain freedom in knowing nobody actually cares because then no one will think differently of you for what you post.

Social media is an essential part of today’s life. There’s no denying it. Staying off the grid isn’t really an option anymore. The best we can do for our own mental health and for others is to be genuine to ourselves in how we represent that on the internet.

Reach Dillon Gross at letters@ collegian.com.

GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY FALYN SEBASTIAN THE COLLEGIAN

SEX COLUMN

Birth control needs to be widely accessible, affordable

GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOE LELINE THE COLLEGIAN

By Dominique Lopez

@caffeinateddee6 Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.

In 2010, the Affordable Care Act was put in place, nearly guaranteeing that people who need medical birth control, such as oral contraceptive pills, would have access to it for free with insurance. However, as the years have continued, the widespread accessibility of free birth control has not been achieved, and many still face a large number of barriers getting birth control.

Why is that the case? Why is a prescription that is given to people to prevent pregnancies and also often to help regulate their menstrual cycles or moods so foreign and hard to receive?

Whether it is at a college campus, grocery store or gas station, traditional condoms are often free or about $1 per condom. Yet for uninsured people with uteruses who want to protect themselves — especially because they can’t always trust their partners — they can be forced to pay up to $600 to get medically provided birth control.

These folks are required to also have a prescription in order to receive some types of birth control. Even then, not all of these options are always offered to people in rural or remote locations, and, according to the Power to Decide, “around 1.2 million of these women live in a country without a single health center offering the full range of methods.”

For individuals in those situations, they are considered to be living in a contraceptive desert. Many of these people have to “find a babysitter, take time off work or travel long distances to access their preferred birth control method,” according to Power to Decide.

This, however, is just one of the many hoops that individuals have to jump through to receive medical birth control. Some still face difficulties even after they have received a prescription from their doctors.

Medical birth control is a personal choice for people with uteruses that allows them the opportunity to promote their own sexual health. It also allows them to do what they want without worrying as much about getting pregnant or, in some forms, contracting a sexually transmitted disease.

However, individuals who have insurance associated with churches or schools that don’t promote contraceptive use often do not have medical birth control covered. This makes it so they never have the chance to have medical birth control and choose their own protection without paying large sums of money.

With abortion laws tightening and Roe v. Wade continuously debated throughout the nation, you would assume the reality of allowing these individuals to have more access to birth control options would be willingly accepted.

However, this nation has continued to prove that is not an option nor is it a reality that people with uteruses may ever experience within their lifetime. Not only are people with uteruses taxed more for menstruation products, they’re challenged in their own states for their right to make the choice to get an abortion.

Fortunately for Colorado State University students, having access to contraceptives isn’t as much of a problem as it is for many others in the world. The CSU Health Network — more specifically CSU Health Network Women’s Care services — offers eight different types of birth control options for students.

People don’t always have the freedom to trust their partner’s ability to protect themselves from getting pregnant. This is why medical birth control should be more willingly offered like it is at CSU.

There shouldn’t be any restrictions placed on birth control nor should there have ever been. People claiming bodily autonomy should not be easier said than done — it should just be easier.

Having control over your own body and decisions is a right — one that people without uteruses have had for ages without having to face any pushback from government entities or their employers. Yet people with female sex organs have never had the opportunity to have this right easily afforded to them.

This shouldn’t be the reality. The idea of having to go through more than two steps to get birth control shouldn’t be something that is so willingly accepted nor should the reality of having to pay almost $600 to get medical birth control in comparison to only $1 per condom. Access should be cheaper, and providing this access safely and widely should be the new norm.

Reach Dominique Lopez at letters@ collegian.com.

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