There was a time when something interesting could happen in your life and almost nobody else knew about it. It may have been a vacation, a concert, a fantastic dinner, or your child’s first home run. In the moment these events occurred you experienced firsthand what was happening, and maybe took a few pictures and told a friend or two about it afterward. But increasingly, experiencing something doesn’t seem to be enough.
Today, the phone comes out almost immediately when something cool is about to take place. Record it. Photograph it. Post it. Share it. Attend a concert and you’ll see thousands of people holding phones above their heads. Visit a tourist attraction and watch people carefully position themselves for photographs rather than focus on the actual attraction. A meal arrives at a restaurant and someone photographs and posts it before taking a bite. Kids do something funny and parents immediately begin recording. Are we living these moments, or simply creating content to share?
Are we living life, or just creating content?
It is important to note that recording and posting about your life is not inherently bad, but it does provide a stark contrast about the ways in which we live today compared to the time before smart phones and social media. Psychologically, something very big has occurred relating to how we live moment-to-moment today that begs the question: Are we documenting our experiences — or increasingly having experiences so we can document them?
Developmental psychologists have long described the adolescent “imaginary audience”— the tendency for young people to feel as though others are constantly noticing, watching, and evaluating them (even though they aren’t). Today, however, the previous imaginary audience has turned into a real audience of fans, followers, and viewers.
Today, our “real” audience of followers and subscribers can potentially watch our vacations, children’s accomplishments, workouts, meals, relationships, opinions, celebrations, and even personal struggles. Life can begin to resemble an ongoing movie in which we simultaneously become the star, director, camera operator, and publicist. And when we are creating content, our audience becomes important. Rather than asking am I enjoying this, another question can quietly enter our thinking: How will this look?
Does my vacation look amazing enough? Is the concert I’m attending cool enough to post? Is my child’s sports highlight awesome enough for a lot of clicks? Does this dinner look like a chef prepared it so I can take a photo and upload? And today’s audience provides immediate feedback. Likes. Views. Comments. Shares.
Over time, we learn which versions of ourselves receive the most attention. That raises an interesting psychological question: Are we gradually shifting from asking “What do I enjoy?” toward asking “What version of my life performs best?”
If so, there could be real-life mental health consequences:
- Less internal validation. “That was meaningful to me” can gradually become “Other people responded to it.”
- Less presence. Part of our attention is devoted to documenting the experience rather than simply experiencing it.
- Identity becomes performance. Instead of discovering who we are, we may begin constructing the version of ourselves that receives the best response.
- Experiences become transactional. Is this worth posting? Will people notice? Will they respond?
- Ordinary life can begin to feel inadequate. If memorable experiences are the ones worth sharing, what happens to all the quiet moments in between?
The last possibility may be especially important, as most of a meaningful human life isn’t particularly post-worthy. In a normal world it consists of ordinary dinners, trivial conversations, uneventful weekends, private accomplishments, boredom, and moments nobody else will ever know occurred.
If we’re constantly searching for the next shareable moment, do we gradually become less capable of appreciating everything that happens between them? The irony is remarkable. We document our lives because we don’t want to forget them, yet sometimes the act of documenting them may prevent us from fully experiencing the moments we’re trying so hard to preserve.
Perhaps the ultimate question isn’t whether we’re sharing too much of our lives, but whether we’ve become so accustomed to performing our lives for other people that we’ve forgotten what it feels like to live a meaningful moment simply for ourselves.
Final thoughts
There is nothing wrong with taking pictures, recording special moments, or sharing parts of our lives with others. The concern begins when sharing the experience becomes more important than actually having it. A meaningful life shouldn’t require an audience, applause, likes, or proof that it happened. Some of our best moments may be the ones nobody photographs, nobody posts, and nobody else ever knows about. Perhaps one of the healthiest things we can occasionally do is experience something wonderful — and resist the urge to post about it.
drstankovich.com
