Not that we’re all mastermind keyboard warriors, but we do definitely hide behind our screens sometimes. Surely, you remember waiting awkwardly in the corridor before a class with your phone out, pretending to text, just the same as you and your friends used to flip up your pink Tesco mobile phones when a rather dishy person of the opposite sex walked by. We all really do use our phones to hide from real life, and, over time, we’ve become pros at it.
Here at Stitcht, we feel like this is the same way social media has worked. We hide behind not simply our screens, but behind waist-sinching apps and freckle-giving filters. We take snaps, edit them, distort them, make them conform to what society deem as ‘attractive’, upload them, and think of a caption that is the complete opposite of how we are really feeling at that moment in time. We have all unknowingly built a whole new persona online, like some sort of alternative universe where we’re all made of robotic perfection.
Another countless scenario is the use of filters, isn’t it? How many of you use filters to send snaps to friends or boys because you don’t look like those insta famous girls who look cute with their messy buns and glasses in the evenings? Yeah, we thought so. We use filters because, the truth is, we hate what we look like.
But it doesn’t just stop there. We cover up our acne via editing apps and thrive of likes to build our self-confidence. We believe smooth skin is the only way to have skin, and that only transfers into real life when we were repulsed to go into school and not go into the toilets every hour to check if our chin spots were still covered up with Superdrug’s concealer.
That poster you had on your wall of Justin Timberlake with his top op in school- yeah, those are everywhere. What is that doing to boys? When you think about it, with those ‘gym lads’, those profiles, boys must feel so much pressure to have a body that looks like the norm, imagine what happens when they don’t? When is someone going to make a link between the pressures of body image conveyed over social media, and the fact that over 80% of suicides are male?
Go and take a scroll of the models you follow and tell me you feel uplifted, confident, and connected? Yeah, we thought so.
But social media doesn’t have to be like this. What if the media you were watching actually empowered you, made you more confident, connected you? Wasn’t that what it was made for? Us at Stitcht want to build a community, but one that is tailored exactly to you.
After reading all this, you may want to go and uninstall absolutely everything from your home page. Don’t. We are offering you a way to stay social whilst also empowering you. It’s social media, but done right.
You have the chance to join the revolution. Today, let’s all #bereel and #dropthefilter by downloading Stitcht and joining our reel on #insecurities.