Do You Hate Social Media Because You Can’t Celebrate Others?

Is it the technology or is it the person using it? Here’s why I think people who hate social media expose a lack of ability in celebrating others.

I know, I know. Sounds harsh. Sounds rough. Sounds hyperbole. But hear me out.

We live in a world where social media gets a good bash in the news probably two dozen times a day. It’s quite prominent in Australia at the moment as our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his party have been pushing for a total social media ban for teenagers until they are 16 (it was previously 13).

There are definitely a lot of statistics indicating that the use of social media is linked to higher levels of anxiety and stress. A number of researchers and papers attempt to correlate or understand the impact of social media on mental health. For instance, this set of studies said that major depression (which I’ve gone through myself) increased by 63% from 2009 to 2017, with the inference being this aligns with the rise in use of social media. I guess a lot of people weren’t on Hi5, Bebo or MySpace like I was before this time. When you had no friends at least you knew MySpace Tom would be there for you.

If you look through these studies, they all firmly blame social media for these sorts of words – Comparison. Insecurity. Self loathing. Inadequacy. That it’s the fault of scrolling your feed that you feel this way, and you’re just a victim of enormous corporate sabotage of the human psyche.

Now, I’ve been in the IT industry 18 years so far. I’m a big technology guy. Every day I see and help contribute to the use of technology to make businesses more efficient, tasks easier and more straightforward, and to accomplish operations that would take thousands of times more people thousands of times more hours to even come close to achieving.

And you yourself have already read the 30,000 articles on why social media is harmful. I intend to provide with your first or maybe only challenge to this in that it’s not social media’s fault that you feel inadequate. It’s not social media’s fault that you constantly compare yourself to others. It’s not social media’s fault that you doomscroll and lock yourself into bad and increasingly depressing or triggering news. If you hate social media for these reasons, I think your hate is misplaced.

Let me tell you who’s fault it is that social media is having a negative impact on your health.

It’s yours. And it’s because you’re not good at celebrating other people.

Let me explain.

Is technology evil?

Social media, like all technology, is a tool. It has a remarkable feature set. You can instantly share and see what’s happening on completely the other side of the world to you. Instead of manually sending 1000+ messages when you have some good news like a birthday, a baby, a wedding, a new house, or even a cool comic book or video game that you’ve just finished that you recommend, you can just do one post with your trusted audience and tell them all at once. Better yet, if you have friends that aren’t as interested in some of those things but interested in others, they can pick and choose their own information that they choose to zoom in on or participate in.

You can text message, audio message, video call or GIFchain any one you know at any time of the day as much as you like, and have it instantly translated for you across language barriers. Back in the day, almost every househould would have the times of 6:30pm til 9pm blocked out for people to call and talk for hours and hours to share the same information that now takes seconds. And if someone doesn’t get back to you straight away or isn’t available or needs some time to process something you’ve said, no biggie, they’ve got it and can get back to you at a better time.

You can organise weddings, birthday parties, baby showers, board game nights, watch parties and more all from the press of a button, and you can track RSVPs nice and easy and have it sync with your device’s calendar.

People can sell goods, advertise their restaurant, launch special promotions, host events in the local area for likeminded people or community groups, take and address customer feedback, get recommendations for fun parks and family events, have another set of backups on important memories…

I could keep going, but the point I’m trying to make here is we’re talking about a set of digital features that do not have an inherent good or evil spin. I could organise a movie night or ISIS could organise a monthly meeting using the same functionality.

Isaac Asimov’s timeless iRobot seems apt here for the ethics of technology.

Why isn’t everyone affected?

So let’s have an uncomfortable zoom in on the aspect of social media then that people don’t like. Those who hate social media are quick to point out that people are only posting their highlight reel, or that people’s lives on Facebook or Instagram aren’t real, or that all these photos are the reason you hate your own life and feel worthless.

There’s some merit to these arguments. It’s true that people don’t often post the challenges that they’re going through, although I could very quickly and easily show you billions of people who do… perhaps too much. It’s also true that people often lie on social media… and their resume… and their dating profile… and their tax return… and their business report… and their… and their… and their…

And it’s true that people can feel high anxiety or inferiority looking at the photos or stories of others.

But not everyone does. There are a significant percentage of people who’ve never felt inferior using Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest. There are lots of people who throw themselves willingly into the feeds a few times a day and thoroughly enjoy their time there. There are those who seem to have a completely opposite experience to the inferiority complex and actually feel more encouraged, supported, inspired and helped because they’re on social media. A large Harvard study found that those who are happiest and healthiest had a very regular social media routine that contributed to or enhanced this mindset.

For every person who gets triggered or explosively angry from what they see, several others get to experience and understand the worldview of others, the motivations, and the depths of people’s beliefs about certain topics. You can create an echo chamber for yourself for sure by following only certain people, only having certain friends, or only following certain news sites, but you can also open yourself to the broader world perspectives on big topics, and something extremely valuable is you can check and validate multiple sources of information to confirm if something is actually true or not rather than just listening to one guy like Joe Rogan saying it for clicks.

And the difference, or rather what I think is the main difference, is this: one person is unable to celebrate others, and the other is.

When you are unable, or more accurately, unwilling, to celebrate others, then social media is a triggering minefield for you. Every time someone celebrates a pregnancy or a wedding or even a cool mini holiday, you cry yourself to sleep about the state of your own life. Where’s my baby? Where’s my wedding? Where’s my little holiday that I could easily take myself but won’t for some reason?

Not only that, every person with a contrary opinion to you is dehumanised and the comment section of certain posts can contain death threats, sexist and racial slurs, and hate crimes, because it’s not a person on the other end of your criticism, it’s a faceless profile with no feeling or emotions worth valuing.

Hatred is often spelt j-e-a-l-o-u-s-y

One of my friends during uni did a deep dive study into Scripture and other resources on the topic of jealousy. His summary of jealousy is one I’ve never forgotten and it’s this – jealousy is making the success of others your own failure.

I feel like modern day psychology took a while to circle this but has finally caught up with this line of thinking.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with your friend trying to share their happy news with you that something good has happened in their life. There is also absolutely nothing wrong with your friend sharing on social media that they’re going through a rough time or got some bad news at the doctor or need some prayer or some encouragement or some help finding their car or whatever else.

That’s what friends are supposed to do. The apostle Paul wrote to the Romans that they should celebrate with those who celebrate and mourn with those who mourn.

Social media provides us a minute-to-minute opportunity to do just this. That’s one of the reasons I personally love it. I get to stay connected with all the friends I’ve met and also choose who those people are. I get to hear about the great news and adventures and studies of people who I love and like and have done life with and get to keep them in my lives.

Before social media and also for those who are not on it, unless they’re blocking out that 6:30pm-9pm slot every night and calling people about things going on in their life (which they don’t), they miss a whole slew of opportunity to stay engaged in a very accessible manner. And to be honest, I cannot name one person I know of who’s gone off social media saying they’ll stay engaged and calling people and updating people who actually does anywhere near the degree they said they would. Certainly it’s orders of magnitude less than when they were on, and it takes then 27 times longer than Share -> Facebook -> write a little comment -> hit Share again.

I stayed connected and reconnected with my now wife a number of years ago when I saw some funny or interesting photo from a flight she was on on Facebook. I’ve had people I haven’t seen in years be able to maintain connection when they’ve gone through a tough time or I have. I can ask people what washer dryer combination brands are good to buy and have people I know and trust help me make a decision (although I still haven’t whoops). Weddings, birthdays, births, deaths and hard times – all made strong and supported through active and regular connection that can be maintained by the push of a few buttons.

And in the age of social media, if you do it right, you never really say goodbye to anybody, because the connection can be kept alive and regular as if you were still in the same city, same company, same church, same whatever.

You know what else I could do? I could look at every person who has a loving partner in their life and wish that I had these 5-10% little details that I wish I had, ruining the happy marriage I do have. I could see all my friends catch up with each other and not with me and feel sad that I didn’t get invited to every event every week and ignore the practicalities of how many people you can invite to restaurants or movies or homes or special occasions. I could feel inferior because someone’s dad bod is mega ripped and I’m not (yet). I could see someone buy another investment property or boat or hotel or house and get all self loathy about what I wish I could do.

We can compare, or we can celebrate. We can be inspired, or be intimidated. We can join in, or miss out.

Compare, or celebrate

One of the saddest things I think is that people just watch others on social media like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast did. The Beast had this magic mirror that he was cursed to only ever experience the world through – always watching, never participating, never engaging.

You know what the great tragedy of our modern time is? Is that that’s how you CHOOSE to live your life. You choose to watch, and not participate. You choose to see, and not comment. You choose to be invited, but never attend. You choose to hear your friends’ great news, and ignore it because you are jealous and insecure and refuse to celebrate others. You’re not cursed in an enchanted castle, so why do you decide that’s the only possible way you can use this magic mirror in your custody?

You’re supposed to be happy for your friends. You’re supposed to champion other people. You’re supposed to support those you know when they go through a hard time as best as you can. You’re supposed to be involved and part of it all.

You hate social media because you are unable, unwilling, or unwanting to celebrate or engage with others.

I’mma go further and call out my Christian readers who want to make a difference in the lives of others and be a positive influence in their world. If you’re not using this technology to live out the faith you profess, to build your world, to build community, to engage in constructive (not critical and destructive) conversation with others, then your treatment of social media is exposing the truth about your decisions.

The devil is described as the accuser of the bretheren. Make sure your voice isn’t labelled the same.

Now let me backpedal a minute here, and I’m sure a lot of people reading this may have been feeling misrepresented – you are well within your right to use or stay off social media. Some people like the privacy, some people don’t like the advertising, some people have addictive personalities or dispositions and waste time scrolling at the expense of their children or wives or husbands or careers, and a number of other factors. That’s all fair.

But that’s not what most people complain about or say when they’re asked why they hate it. Do a search for yourself and tell me that this feeling of comparison and inferiority is not the top result every time.

And I can’t help thinking how many articles or posts or commentaries I hear about people who hate social media and the reasons they keep giving just keep exposing their jealousy and inability to celebrate others.

If you are unable to celebrate others, other people will never celebrate you. In fact I see it time and time again that the person who can’t be happy for others usually doesn’t see victory or good things occur in their own life. The one who can’t celebrate another’s wedding has a frustrating, empty love life. The one who can’t be happy for other people having kids frustrates or destroys their own pregnancy or familial journey. And the one who won’t join in celebrating someone else usually hears crickets when they try to share some of their own good news.

The late Zig Ziglar regularly put forward that you can have anything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want out of life.

For a faith based reader who’s not convinced still and ignored the mention of Romans earlier, consider the golden rule – treat others the way you want to be treated. Or that as long as it is called today, let us spur each other on. Or that it’s the one who refreshes others who is themselves refreshed.

Social media is such a powerful addition and tool, if you can use it well. But if Meta headquarters and all their data centres melted tomorrow, if Trump’s Truth Social tanked to 0, if Elon Musk hit the delete button on X, and all the social media platforms disappeared from the face of the earth overnight, you would still be the same as you are today:

Celebrating others, or refusing to. Inspired by the success of others, or intimidated by it. Involved in the things people go through, or ignorant. Engaged, or empty. Integrated, or isolated. The one that people can’t wait to tell, or the one that people want to tell to go to h…. happy snowman.

Who you are online is just who you are all the time.

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I just get sad when I think of how many people I see misusing something that can be so great and powerful and such a useful addition or extension of life when they say they hate social media. I just want to appeal to you that hey, you’re using it wrong.

And so, the next time you see someone put up a pregnancy post, you smash that like button and flood that comments section with support and joy. When you see two people go out for a nice night or your friends have a dinner party, join the laughter and the happiness. Champion the gifts of others. Celebrate people’s businesses and ventures. Encourage the fire of people’s zeal and passion in their faith, their learning, their education, their destiny. Lift people up when they’re feeling down. Tell someone you’re thinking of them. Disagree with someone in a way that fosters growth or discovery for you and them.

Or, sit back and watch like a cynical old quack and wonder why your life never changes.

On the screen and off the screen, we need to be people who champion and celebrate the people in our lives. Everyone has enough bad news and detractors in their life – why not choose to be a voice of joy, reason, support and love wherever your feet and your hands lead you.

How about you? Do you hate social media? How can we celebrate others well on our feeds?