Social media platforms are essentially a large crowd of people shouting “here I am”.  Everyone incessantly emphasises their presence. Not only do they shout “here I am” but also “I am this”: “this is my body”, “these are the people I know, the places I go, this is how I dress”. And what do these things say about me?

I often wonder if this should be condemned though... In the end we all feel the need to be present, to 'be there' and to identify with something. The medias are just the means to express this human need. The problem is perhaps then the quest to belong or be part of something that is not there in the moment. The need to define oneself in front of a mass of people we cannot identify (who exactly are my 800 or more followers ?). Why do I feel the need to make them a spectator of my life? Above all, am I aware that they will be so caught up in their own head, their own presence and their own way of identifying themselves that they will pay little attention to the voices of others? I feel at times trapped in having to prove something to people who I ultimately should not care about, and who above all will not be paying attention to me. Also, this desire of mine to be present in the abstract world obviously prevents me from really being present in the real world, it sucks up my attention and energy, and this annoys me.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who decided to remove themselves from social media because it upset her that she didn't feel fully represented by her online profile. Indeed, on social media it is difficult to share all the different shades that make you who you are. It is instead very easy to remain stuck and limited to one of the many things that represents you. In normal life this happens less, mainly because other people do not have, at all times, an account of what we were before and what we are now. In concrete life there is paradoxically more fluidity and malleability: today I can be blue and in a month's time green, and perhaps the people around me will not even realise my change, unless it is radical. On social media, on the other hand, I have immortalised what I was yesterday, what I am today and what I will be tomorrow, thus making the differences palpable to everyone's eyes. And we know that the fear of appearing inconsistent is something that affects us and often blocks us from changing.

What upsets me more than the desire for presence, which I do not find so harmful afterall, is the anxiety of absence. It seems to me that if I don't send a continuous reminder of my presence in the virtual world, then I disappear. It seems to me sometimes that if I don't immortalise the things I do and share them then maybe those things are not relevant. Then a problem arises. As always, the real problem arise as soon as it brings distress to the individual. 

Still, when I find myself criticising social media I ask myself "so why don't you delete it?". Aside from the physical dependence I have now developed, the answer is that I have a strong fear of disappearing.....