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So without further ado, let's get right to our next article, and continue optimizing your life. How social media creates narcissists, and what to do about it, by Ali Cornish of Everthrive.org. Lately, I've been cleaning up my digital photos. The goal is to eliminate redundancies and bad photos, the latter of which are determined by small file size, low resolution, improper camera angles, mean meaningless or confusing content.
As I began dredging my pictures, I noted a dominating presence of selfies. After a brief period of shock, self-loathing, followed by grim acknowledgement, I collected them all in a folder labeled creatively, Ali Selfies, and counting them I found more than a thousand. Why so many? What spurred this traumatic increase in documenting my face?
I traced them back to their relative year of inception, 2004, the year I got the Motorola Razr camera phone, the year my first serious relationship ended, and the year my joint Facebook. At that time, Facebook was only available for college students. I was a senior at the University of San Diego, and I worked as the features editor of the Vista. One day at the office, someone broached the topic of another MySpace, and we editors became extremely intrigued.
We were already frolicking on MySpace and AOL Instant Messenger, but we were thrilled at the prospect of yet another method to come in with our fellow undergrads. After signing up, we spent the afternoon poking each other and crafting witty status updates. We sent friend requests to our roommates, our boyfriends, our girlfriends. We wanted to friend everyone we had ever come into contact with.
Facebook would feed our desperation for social interaction beyond university walls, little do we know Facebook would prey on our insecurities and assist in our evolution as narcissists. Narcissism is defined as a tendency to believe oneself to be superior to others, to persistently pursue admiration from others, and participate in ego-tistic thinking and behavior. Numerous studies show a strong correlation between insecure narcissistic tendencies and social media use. There's a very good chance that people who post self-promotional content and those who spend more than one hour a day on Facebook or other social networks have issues with their self-esteem.
There's also a good chance that those who practice the art of the selfie or utilize social media barring business purposes are feeding into their own insecurities, producing narcissistic tendencies. For individuals such as myself aged 18 to 40, the millennial and zenial generations, taking selfies and using social media platforms may seem to be integral parts of life. We've an inherent need for attention since we are products of the self-esteem movement emphasized by parental hovering, instant gratification, and meaningless praise. Social media feeds the need for instant rewards.
It both creates and rewards narcissistic tendencies by providing an endless outlet for self-promotion. Once we acknowledge this generational trend, we can be aware of his manifestation in our actions and make our acumen for social media into something useful instead of something detrimental. Before joining Facebook, I already had a rich, albeit detrimental digital life on MySpace. I carefully curated photo albums of my travels and posted highly photoshopped profile pictures.
I took advantage of the embedded music player and chose what I thought were unique songs on a rotating basis. One month, David Bowie's modern love might play upon entering. The next month would be Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith. After that, perhaps some hip hop, featuring members of hieroglyphics.
I included something about how I only watch Cohen Brothers films, even though if you ask me what films they made, I could only name the big ole basket. By using both MySpace and Facebook, my self-esteem rose and fell with each font change, each message, and each new connection. I hid behind the curtain of digital interaction. I thought that everyone would be interested in what I was doing, and I wanted them to know what I was doing.
This was the essence of self-promotion for its own sake. Once I grew more aware of the reasons behind my digital habits, I became disgusted with myself. I quit MySpace in 2007. I quit Facebook shortly after.
During my years of disconnection, I reconnected with myself. I got a dog and, through his companionship, I rekindled a genuine appreciation for solitude and nature. I went on long walks through forced to trails without posting to social media. Instead of checking Facebook when I was bored, I put more time into planning events with friends and family, and into conversing in real time, same as the vice, with those around me.
I put my time and energy into my education master's program where I received a near 4.0. I experienced entire albums on vinyl while exploring the not-so-secret world of craft beer. I began handwriting letters again. I resumed reflecting on my own life instead of the lives of others.
It is 2016, and I've since rejoined Facebook, but now I use it with awareness and moderation. I try not to use my device as a distraction, even though this can be difficult at times. I've turned off all notifications and only like or post something when I think the information is truly useful to at least a few of my connections. I'm aware when I enter social media loops from which it is difficult to emerge.
To my trial and my error, I've come to understand the true essence and purpose of Facebook. Under the guise of connecting with friends, Facebook only exists as a means to promote ourselves to others. Some psychologists are calling the resulting self-promotional phenomenon, the new, socially acceptable narcissism. However, I don't think that narcissism should be a social normative in our society.
Extreme self-involvement should never be okay, and people should not abuse themselves as such on social media. Instead, we should be aware of the reasons we're picking up our devices and losing ourselves to social media. We should know why we feel like seeking attention from others online. Above all, we need to acknowledge our offline loneliness and overcome our fears of isolation and rejection.
When we come to terms with our social needs, we can get to the heart of our insecurities, thereby emerging from our narcissistic cages. You just listen to the post titled How Social Media Creates Narcissists Man What To Do About It by Ali Cornish of Everthrive.org. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction.
That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise, CBC News. I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health, what supplements to take, hours of sleep, what my diet should focus on. Superpower finally takes the guessing out of it.
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If they get to Ali, we don't talk a ton about social media here, but we have occasional posts covering this topic. And last time we talked about it, I did mention a documentary on Netflix called The Social Dilemma that, while can be a bit of a scare tactic itself, does have some enlightening information from experts in the field that I think people should be aware of. So if you're interested in seeing why you see certain information, how it might be different than what other people see, and hear from even the people who created these networks but no longer want anything to do with them, you can check out that documentary on Netflix. Again, that's called The Social Dilemma.
But I think I'll wrap it up there, have a great rest of your day with maybe a little less social media, and I'll be back tomorrow where you're optimal life. Oh, wait.