THERE IS POSITIVITY IN SOCIAL MEDIA!!!

The Bad Side

In the world that we live in today, in order to look at the good we need to recognize the bad. Hence, why I'm starting with the bad side to social media...

In this day and age, we use social media as a platform to chat to friends, family and people that we haven't spoken to in a while. But numerous industries also use the platform of social media to endorse their brands. Now promotion is never a bad thing (people need to sell their products!!!) but the manner in which their brands are being promoted, that's a whole other discussion.

We all see those "perfect people" holding those expensive brand perfumes or using the best branded clothing on billboards and on the internet. The first thought that always comes to my mind is "I want to smell with that perfume while wearing those clothes" which I know is a stretch (university student, hence, BROKE!!!). The only way I know I would be able to have those products is if I were to model for those companies and promote their brands, which brings me to my point of the bad side to social media.

For all those that don't know me (which is basically all of you). Hi, I'm your below average (if not just borderline average) looking 19 year old male who loves food and works out on weekends at the gym. Those of you thinking "how does this tie in to the bad side to social media?" well, think of this... I want to have all of those fancy things but I'm broke, so how would I be able to get what I want and not pay for it. You model for the brand!!!. Now here's where me describing myself comes into play, I know for a fact that there's no way in the world that I will ever be able to become to model for these brands (for any brand to be honest) and its all due to the fact that I know I don't fit the "criteria" to become model material. But that's okay (not really!) it's something I can live with (kind of!). It just sucks though that even in the current world that we're living in, certain traditions haven't changed.

Theidea of being a model is still this stick figure woman or a 6 packed man, whichbrainwashes our society in thinking that the "perfect person" should be a stickfigure women or a 6 packed man. Yes, I do agree the industries have improved byemploying "plus size" (as they call it) people. But even then it's the baremin, it's just enough so that they don't get sued for being bias and they cansay "we include all". Even though we fight all the time to prove that beauty isin everyone. To prove that you don't need to be a certain way to be sociallyaccepted or recognized, but these industries just keep coming hard to push theirideation of how to be socially recognized or to even become someone famous. Itdemotivates the majority of the population, making them not want to followtheir dream(s) because they don't see themselves as people who meet up tosocial media's standards. It puts them down a spiral of depression and forcesthem down this rabbit hole whereby they feel the need to "perfect" themselvesin order to follow their dream(s), all thanks to the powerful influence thatsocial media has on us as individuals.