Living A Private Life Is So Much Better. Here’s Why:

People are oversharing all kinds of information on the internet.

Ever gone to meet up with your best friend for coffee and a catch-up and realized there’s nothing really to catch up on because it’s all already been said on your socials?

If you open one of the social media apps on your phone, I bet there will be someone on there who is sharing some form of personal information. It could be to do with their relationship, their job, their holiday, anything really — but I guarantee if you wanted to, you could find out a lot about their life.

Why do people willingly give away so much about themselves?

Due to the invention of social media and the internet, people have been led to believe that everyone gives a damn about their life. No one lives privately anymore because they all want to gloat about their successes to people they’ve sometimes never even met.

But how often do we see people sharing about their misfortunes? Not as often.

When someone has a strong online presence with a massive following and is sharing every minor detail about their life, there will always be those who are secretly praying for their downfall. Jealous people. Insecure people. People who have an opinion on something that doesn’t concern them.

How to combat this? Keep your life private!

Now, privacy does not equal secrecy. If you went on holiday, share it (if you wish). But we must draw the line somewhere, otherwise, we receive unwelcome comments and the hate can take a toll on our mental health.

I, for one, have heard people who’ve formed an opinion of me without ever having spoken to me. Why? Because they follow me on Instagram and thus believe that they know me on a personal level. It’s wrong, but it happens.

Online, people are only showing you what they want you to see. It’s the tip of the iceberg (an iceberg that may have had a load of editing and filters thrown on top of it before being posted anyway). The internet allows us to paint the ideal picture of ourselves and be perceived in the way that we would like. We can reinvent ourselves online.

The people that look like they have it all figured out, probably haven’t. The people who just seem to be amazing at everything they do will have failed at something in the past, too.

So don’t always believe what you see on an app. And don’t overshare where it’s not necessary. Trust me, you will live a much more peaceful life if people don’t know your every move.

How do we implement privacy?

This being said social media was created so that people could share their interests — so we should not take this away.

For instance, people can know that you are in a relationship (because you may not want to appear single or have single people sliding into your DMs) but we don’t need all the details.

People can know that you got that new job but we don’t need the step-by-step process from when you applied to when you went to the interview to when you were hired.

You may want to announce the birth of your beautiful new baby but we don’t need a thousand photos; just the one will do.

Seems a bit harsh but I promise it will do you good. It will protect you from drama and negative comments. Plus, when you get to that coffee date with your bestie, you’ll have new things to talk about and the conversation will be interesting.

I want to push people to live more in the real world and presently. The joy that a good conversation gives you cannot be matched with some texts back and forth over the phone. Yes, take pictures so you can have memories.

We have the luxuries of cameras which means we’ll be able to look back at the good times in years to come, but wouldn’t it be nice to have photos in an album that the world has not seen?