I love social media. Like, I LOVE it. I love reading and writing blogs. I love keeping up with friends on Facebook. I love meeting people from all over on Twitter.
In my opinion, one unintentional fallout from social media is the propensity for a highly styled life.
The rich and famous have had personal stylists for years. Stylists existed in retail shops and magazines, not in the every day home. Professionally decorated homes were for the well-to-do.
With the advent of mediums such as Twitter and Instagram, more and more people were able to share multiple aspects of their life at the click of a button. Their clothes. Their food. Their kids. Their daily lives. Even their red cups :)
Family pictures no longer consisted of setting the self-timer and running to jump into the picture. We hire professional photographers. We coordinate our outfits, but don't want to be too matchy. We pick out our location to convey a message (I live at the beach! I love nature!). We are posed. We hope that our special moments are captured, so we have the perfect picture for our Christmas cards. Believe me. I've been there. So many of us have been there.
Even our "candids" are styled. A pair of stunning high heels or logo'd flats are precariously tossed at just the right angle. They fall next to our shopping bags, with the logos that just happen to be showing. Or we show our red cups and just happen to capture a new piece of jewelry or the logo on our car steering wheel within the shot.
Is it bad? It's not. It's not hurting anyone (from my point of view anyways). But what saddens me is the loss of true candid shots of life. Will there not be pictures of family members wearing cheesy matching t-shirts anymore? How about pictures of friends who just got in a frosting fight at a 16th birthday party (ahem...)? Or worst, skipping out pictures all together because you don't look the way you want. Andrea shared this post and it really resonated with me.
Just food for thought.
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Very well said. I use social media all the time, but I almost wish it weren't available. I was off of FB for all of 2010 as a new year resolution and it was amazing. With our phones and all of it at our fingertips everything is so much more convenient, but we're taking so much away from good old fashioned togetherness.
ReplyDeleteI love this post so, so much. I found myself nodding my head and "mmhmm-ing" the entire time I was reading. I was looking through some old pictures a few weeks ago and those candid moments are truly the most precious. As for cheesy matching shirts - I'll be in matching pjs with my mom on Christmas morning. No shame!
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